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T H E /proc F I L E S Y S T E M
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/proc/sys Terrehon Bowden <
[email protected]> October 7 1999
Bodo Bauer <
[email protected]>
2.4.x update Jorge Nerin <
[email protected]> November 14 2000
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Version 1.3 Kernel version 2.2.12
Kernel version 2.4.0-test11-pre4
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Table of Contents
-----------------
0 Preface
0.1 Introduction/Credits
0.2 Legal Stuff
1 Collecting System Information
1.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
1.2 Kernel data
1.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
1.4 Networking info in /proc/net
1.5 SCSI info
1.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
1.7 TTY info in /proc/tty
1.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
2 Modifying System Parameters
2.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data
2.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
2.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
2.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem
2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
2.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
2.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
2.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
2.9 Appletalk
2.10 IPX
2.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
2.12 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score
2.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
2.14 /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
2.15 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
2.16 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
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Preface
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0.1 Introduction/Credits
------------------------
This documentation is part of a soon (or so we hope) to be released book on
the SuSE Linux distribution. As there is no complete documentation for the
/proc file system and we've used many freely available sources to write these
chapters, it seems only fair to give the work back to the Linux community.
This work is based on the 2.2.* kernel version and the upcoming 2.4.*. I'm
afraid it's still far from complete, but we hope it will be useful. As far as
we know, it is the first 'all-in-one' document about the /proc file system. It
is focused on the Intel x86 hardware, so if you are looking for PPC, ARM,
SPARC, AXP, etc., features, you probably won't find what you are looking for.
It also only covers IPv4 networking, not IPv6 nor other protocols - sorry. But
additions and patches are welcome and will be added to this document if you
mail them to Bodo.
We'd like to thank Alan Cox, Rik van Riel, and Alexey Kuznetsov and a lot of
other people for help compiling this documentation. We'd also like to extend a
special thank you to Andi Kleen for documentation, which we relied on heavily
to create this document, as well as the additional information he provided.
Thanks to everybody else who contributed source or docs to the Linux kernel
and helped create a great piece of software... :)
If you have any comments, corrections or additions, please don't hesitate to
contact Bodo Bauer at
[email protected]. We'll be happy to add them to this
document.
The latest version of this document is available online at
http://skaro.nightcrawler.com/~bb/Docs/Proc as HTML version.
If the above direction does not works for you, ypu could try the kernel
mailing list at
[email protected] and/or try to reach me at
[email protected].
0.2 Legal Stuff
---------------
We don't guarantee the correctness of this document, and if you come to us
complaining about how you screwed up your system because of incorrect
documentation, we won't feel responsible...
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CHAPTER 1: COLLECTING SYSTEM INFORMATION
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In This Chapter
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* Investigating the properties of the pseudo file system /proc and its
ability to provide information on the running Linux system
* Examining /proc's structure
* Uncovering various information about the kernel and the processes running
on the system
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The proc file system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the
kernel. It can be used to obtain information about the system and to change
certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).
First, we'll take a look at the read-only parts of /proc. In Chapter 2, we
show you how you can use /proc/sys to change settings.
1.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
-----------------------------------
The directory /proc contains (among other things) one subdirectory for each
process running on the system, which is named after the process ID (PID).
The link self points to the process reading the file system. Each process
subdirectory has the entries listed in Table 1-1.
Table 1-1: Process specific entries in /proc
..............................................................................
File Content
clear_refs Clears page referenced bits shown in smaps output
cmdline Command line arguments
cpu Current and last cpu in which it was executed (2.4)(smp)
cwd Link to the current working directory
environ Values of environment variables
exe Link to the executable of this process
fd Directory, which contains all file descriptors
maps Memory maps to executables and library files (2.4)
mem Memory held by this process
root Link to the root directory of this process
stat Process status
statm Process memory status information
status Process status in human readable form
wchan If CONFIG_KALLSYMS is set, a pre-decoded wchan
smaps Extension based on maps, the rss size for each mapped file
..............................................................................
For example, to get the status information of a process, all you have to do is
read the file /proc/PID/status:
>cat /proc/self/status
Name: cat
State: R (running)
Pid: 5452
PPid: 743
TracerPid: 0 (2.4)
Uid: 501 501 501 501
Gid: 100 100 100 100
Groups: 100 14 16
VmSize: 1112 kB
VmLck: 0 kB
VmRSS: 348 kB
VmData: 24 kB
VmStk: 12 kB
VmExe: 8 kB
VmLib: 1044 kB
SigPnd: 0000000000000000
SigBlk: 0000000000000000
SigIgn: 0000000000000000
SigCgt: 0000000000000000
CapInh: 00000000fffffeff
CapPrm: 0000000000000000
CapEff: 0000000000000000
This shows you nearly the same information you would get if you viewed it with
the ps command. In fact, ps uses the proc file system to obtain its
information. The statm file contains more detailed information about the
process memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-2. The stat
file contains details information about the process itself. Its fields are
explained in Table 1-3.
Table 1-2: Contents of the statm files (as of 2.6.8-rc3)
..............................................................................
Field Content
size total program size (pages) (same as VmSize in status)
resident size of memory portions (pages) (same as VmRSS in status)
shared number of pages that are shared (i.e. backed by a file)
trs