> I've worked round this with a snapshot of base.tgz, pulled out
> sysctl and a new libc for it (not my preferred option, hopefully
> it'll be backwards compatible) and sysctl -a now returns useful
> stuff. I'll have another go.... *very* glad I didn't try this
> on my headless (+ no serial port) box now :)

> Is it worth having a sysctl in the bootstrap toolchain, if gcc
> depends on it so much?

but if I understand correctly your problem is just new kernel and old =
userland.  Old kernel and old userland should suit fine.  No?