What value can not be changed in /proc/sys?

Solution 1:

Because ostype don't have write permission:

ls -al /proc/sys/kernel/ostype
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2011-02-25 05:20 /proc/sys/kernel/ostype

If file in /proc/sys/ have write permission, you can change values in it.

Solution 2:

The real answer to this question is really to understand what the proc filesystem means. /proc isn't a real filesystem - it's a filesystem interface to system internals. When you're reading or writing things in /proc you aren't reading or writing to or from the disk - you're reading and writing directly into things lie kernel memory or device drivers.

Thus yes the basic answer to 'why can't I write to /proc/sys/kernel/ostype?' is that the file isn't writable. However, the more complete answer is that this particular file is presented to you as read-only because it wouldn't make any sense to change it. 'ostype' is an immutable property of a running system.