Description of problem:

In RHEL6, 'sysctl -p' has a hard-coded line size limit of 256 characters. 

<sysctl.c>
/*
 *     Preload the sysctl's from the conf file
 *           - we parse the file and then reform it (strip out whitespace)
 *
 */
static int Preload(const char *restrict const filename) {
   char oneline[256];
   char buffer[256];
   FILE *fp;
</sysctl.c>

Upstream and RHEL7 increase this to 4k:

<RHEL7 sysctl.c>
#define LINELEN 4096

/*
 * Preload the sysctl's from the conf file.  We parse the file and then
 * reform it (strip out whitespace).
 */
static int Preload(const char *restrict const filename)
{
        char oneline[LINELEN];
        char buffer[LINELEN];
        FILE *fp;
</RHEL7 sysctl.c>

My client would like to request that we increase this limit to bring it into line with newer releases as they currently do have conf lines which exceed this (and the rc.local workaround isn't ideal).

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
procps-3.2.8-30.el6.x86_64