From Linux Man Pages
proc - process information pseudo-filesystem
DESCRIPTION
The proc filesystem is a pseudo-filesystem which is used as an interface to kernel data structures. It is com-
monly mounted at /proc. Most of it is read-only, but some files allow kernel variables to be changed.
The following outline gives a quick tour through the /proc hierarchy.
/proc/[number]
There is a numerical subdirectory for each running process; the subdirectory is named by the process ID.
Each such subdirectory contains the following pseudo-files and directories.
/proc/[number]/auxv (since 2.6.0-test7)
This contains the contents of the ELF interpreter information passed to the process at exec time. The
format is one unsigned long ID plus one unsigned long value for each entry. The last entry contains two
zeros.
/proc/[number]/cmdline
This holds the complete command line for the process, unless the whole process has been swapped out or the
process is a zombie. In either of these latter cases, there is nothing in this file: i.e. a read on this
file will return 0 characters. The command line arguments appear in this file as a set of null-separated
strings, with a further null byte after the last string.
/proc/[number]/cwd
This is a symbolic link to the current working directory of the process. To find out the cwd of process
20, for instance, you can do this:
cd /proc/20/cwd; /bin/pwd
Note that the pwd command is often a shell builtin, and might not work properly. In bash, you may use pwd
-P.
In a multithreaded process, the contents of this symbolic link are not available if the main thread has
already terminated (typically by calling pthread_exit(3).
/proc/[number]/environ
This file contains the environment for the process. The entries are separated by null bytes ('\0'), and
there may be a null bytes at the end. Thus, to print out the environment of process 1, you would do:
(cat /proc/1/environ; echo) | tr "\000" "\n"
(For a reason why one should want to do this, see lilo(8).)
/proc/[number]/exe
Under Linux 2.2 and later, this file is a symbolic link containing the actual pathname of the executed
command. This symbolic link can be dereferenced normally; attempting to open it will open the executable.
You can even type /proc/[number]/exe to run another copy of the same executable as is being run by process
[number]. In a multithreaded process, the contents of this symbolic link are not available if the main
thread has already terminated (typically by calling pthread_exit(3)).
Under Linux 2.0 and earlier /proc/[number]/exe is a pointer to the binary which was executed, and appears
as a symbolic link. A readlink(2) call on this file under Linux 2.0 returns a string in the format:
[device]:inode
For example, [0301]:1502 would be inode 1502 on device major 03 (IDE, MFM, etc. drives) minor 01 (first
partition on the first drive).
find(1) with the -inum option can be used to locate the file.
/proc/[number]/fd
This is a subdirectory containing one entry for each file which the process has open, named by its file
descriptor, and which is a symbolic link to the actual file. Thus, 0 is standard input, 1 standard out-
put, 2 standard error, etc.
In a multithreaded process, the contents of this directory are not available if the main thread has
already terminated (typically by calling pthread_exit(3)).
Programs that will take a filename, but will not take the standard input, and which write to a file, but
will not send their output to standard output, can be effectively foiled this way, assuming that -i is the
flag designating an input file and -o is the flag designating an output file:
foobar -i /proc/self/fd/0 -o /proc/self/fd/1 ...
and you have a working filter.
/proc/self/fd/N is approximately the same as /dev/fd/N in some UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Most Linux
MAKEDEV scripts symbolically link /dev/fd to /proc/self/fd, in fact.
/proc/[number]/maps
A file containing the currently mapped memory regions and their access permissions.
The format is:
address perms offset dev inode pathname
08048000-08056000 r-xp 00000000 03:0c 64593 /usr/sbin/gpm
08056000-08058000 rw-p 0000d000 03:0c 64593 /usr/sbin/gpm
08058000-0805b000 rwxp 00000000 00:00 0
40000000-40013000 r-xp 00000000 03:0c 4165 /lib/ld-2.2.4.so
40013000-40015000 rw-p 00012000 03:0c 4165 /lib/ld-2.2.4.so
4001f000-40135000 r-xp 00000000 03:0c 45494 /lib/libc-2.2.4.so
40135000-4013e000 rw-p 00115000 03:0c 45494 /lib/libc-2.2.4.so
4013e000-40142000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
bffff000-c0000000 rwxp 00000000 00:00 0
where address is the address space in the process that it occupies, perms is a set of permissions:
r = read
w = write
x = execute
s = shared
p = private (copy on write)
offset is the offset into the file/whatever, dev is the device (major:minor), and inode is the inode on
that device. 0 indicates that no inode is associated with the memory region, as the case would be with
bss.
Under Linux 2.0 there is no field giving pathname.
/proc/[number]/mem
This file can be used to access the pages of a process's memory through open(2), read(2), and fseek(3).
/proc/[number]/root
Unix and Linux support the idea of a per-process root of the filesystem, set by the chroot(2) system call.
This file is a symbolic link that points to the process's root directory, and behaves as exe, fd/*, etc.
do.
In a multithreaded process, the contents of this symbolic link are not available if the main thread has
already terminated (typically by calling pthread_exit(3)).
/proc/[number]/smaps (since Linux 2.6.14)
This file shows memory consumption for each of the process's mappings. For each of mappings there is a
series of lines as follows:
08048000-080bc000 r-xp 00000000 03:02 13130 /bin/bash
Size: 464 kB
Rss: 424 kB
Shared_Clean: 424 kB
Shared_Dirty: 0 kB
Private_Clean: 0 kB
Private_Dirty: 0 kB
The first of these lines shows the same information as is displayed for the mapping in /proc/[num-
ber]/maps. The remaining lines show the size of the mapping, the amount of the mapping that is currently
resident in RAM, the number clean and dirty shared pages in the mapping, and the number clean and dirty
private pages in the mapping.
This file is only present if the CONFIG_MMU kernel configuration option is enabled.
/proc/[number]/stat
Status information about the process. This is used by ps(1). It is defined in
/usr/src/linux/fs/proc/array.c.
The fields, in order, with their proper scanf(3) format specifiers, are:
pid %d The process ID.
comm %s
The filename of the executable, in parentheses. This is visible whether or not the executable is
swapped out.
state %c
One character from the string "RSDZTW" where R is running, S is sleeping in an interruptible wait,
D is waiting in uninterruptible disk sleep, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped (on a signal), and
W is paging.
ppid %d
The PID of the parent.
pgrp %d
The process group ID of the process.
session %d
The session ID of the process.
tty_nr %d
The tty the process uses.
tpgid %d
The process group ID of the process which currently owns the tty that the process is connected to.
flags %lu
The kernel flags word of the process. For bit meanings, see the PF_* defines in <linux/sched.h>.
Details depend on the kernel version.
minflt %lu
The number of minor faults the process has made which have not required loading a memory page from
disk.
cminflt %lu
The number of minor faults that the process's waited-for children have made.
majflt %lu
The number of major faults the process has made which have required loading a memory page from
disk.
cmajflt %lu
The number of major faults that the process's waited-for children have made.
utime %lu
The number of jiffies that this process has been scheduled in user mode.
stime %lu
The number of jiffies that this process has been scheduled in kernel mode.
cutime %ld
The number of jiffies that this process's waited-for children have been scheduled in user mode.
(See also times(2).)
cstime %ld
The number of jiffies that this process's waited-for children have been scheduled in kernel mode.
priority %ld
The standard nice value, plus fifteen. The value is never negative in the kernel.
nice %ld
The nice value ranges from 19 (nicest) to -19 (not nice to others).
0 %ld This value is hard coded to 0 as a placeholder for a removed field.
itrealvalue %ld
The time in jiffies before the next SIGALRM is sent to the process due to an interval timer.
starttime %lu
The time in jiffies the process started after system boot.
vsize %lu
Virtual memory size in bytes.
rss %ld
Resident Set Size: number of pages the process has in real memory, minus 3 for administrative pur-
poses. This is just the pages which count towards text, data, or stack space. This does not
include pages which have not been demand-loaded in, or which are swapped out.
rlim %lu
Current limit in bytes on the rss of the process (usually 4294967295 on i386).
startcode %lu
The address above which program text can run.
endcode %lu
The address below which program text can run.
startstack %lu
The address of the start of the stack.
kstkesp %lu
The current value of esp (stack pointer), as found in the kernel stack page for the process.
kstkeip %lu
The current EIP (instruction pointer).
signal %lu
The bitmap of pending signals.
blocked %lu
The bitmap of blocked signals.
sigignore %lu
The bitmap of ignored signals.
sigcatch %lu
The bitmap of caught signals.
wchan %lu
This is the "channel" in which the process is waiting. It is the address of a system call, and can
be looked up in a namelist if you need a textual name. (If you have an up-to-date /etc/psdatabase,
then try ps -l to see the WCHAN field in action.)
nswap %lu
Number of pages swapped (not maintained).
cnswap %lu
Cumulative nswap for child processes (not maintained).
exit_signal %d
Signal to be sent to parent when we die.
processor %d
CPU number last executed on.
rt_priority %lu (since kernel 2.5.19)
Real-time scheduling priority (see sched_setscheduler(2)).
policy %lu (since kernel 2.5.19)
Scheduling policy (see sched_setscheduler(2)).
delayacct_blkio_ticks (since kernel 2.6.18)
Aggregated block I/O delays (measured in clock ticks (centiseconds)).
/proc/[number]/statm
Provides information about memory status in pages. The columns are:
size total program size
resident resident set size
share shared pages
text text (code)
lib library
data data/stack
dt dirty pages (unused in Linux 2.6)
/proc/[number]/status
Provides much of the information in /proc/[number]/stat and /proc/[number]/statm in a format that's easier
for humans to parse.
/proc/[number]/task (since kernel 2.6.0-test6)
This is a directory that contains one subdirectory for each thread in the process. The name of each sub-
directory is the numerical thread ID of the thread (see gettid(2)). Within each of these subdirectories,
there is a set of files with the same names and contents as under the /proc/[number] directories. For
attributes that are shared by all threads, the contents for each of the files under the task/[thread-ID]
subdirectories will be the same as in the corresponding file in the parent /proc/[number] directory (e.g.,
in a multithreaded process, all of the task/[thread-ID]/cwd files will have the same value as the
/proc/[number]/cwd file in the parent directory, since all of the threads in a process share a working
directory). For attributes that are distinct for each thread, the corresponding files under task/[thread-
ID] may have different values (e.g., various fields in each of the task/[thread-ID]/status files may be
different for each thread).
In a multithreaded process, the contents of the /proc/[number]/task directory are not available if the
main thread has already terminated (typically by calling pthread_exit(3)).
/proc/apm
Advanced power management version and battery information when CONFIG_APM is defined at kernel compilation
time.
/proc/bus
Contains subdirectories for installed busses.
/proc/bus/pccard
Subdirectory for pcmcia devices when CONFIG_PCMCIA is set at kernel compilation time.
/proc/bus/pccard/drivers
/proc/bus/pci
Contains various bus subdirectories and pseudo-files containing information about pci busses, installed
devices, and device drivers. Some of these files are not ASCII.
/proc/bus/pci/devices
Information about pci devices. They may be accessed through lspci(8) and setpci(8).
/proc/cmdline
Arguments passed to the Linux kernel at boot time. Often done via a boot manager such as lilo(1).
/proc/cpuinfo
This is a collection of CPU and system architecture dependent items, for each supported architecture a
different list. Two common entries are processor which gives CPU number and bogomips; a system constant
that is calculated during kernel initialization. SMP machines have information for each CPU.
/proc/devices
Text listing of major numbers and device groups. This can be used by MAKEDEV scripts for consistency with
the kernel.
/proc/diskstats (since Linux 2.5.69)
This file contains disk I/O statistics for each disk device. See the kernel source file Documenta-
tion/iostats.txt for further information.
/proc/dma
This is a list of the registered ISA DMA (direct memory access) channels in use.
/proc/driver
Empty subdirectory.
/proc/execdomains
List of the execution domains (ABI personalities).
/proc/fb
Frame buffer information when CONFIG_FB is defined during kernel compilation.
/proc/filesystems
A text listing of the filesystems which were compiled into the kernel. Incidentally, this is used by
mount(1) to cycle through different filesystems when none is specified.
/proc/fs
Empty subdirectory.
/proc/ide
This directory exists on systems with the ide bus. There are directories for each ide channel and
attached device. Files include:
cache buffer size in KB
capacity number of sectors
driver driver version
geometry physical and logical geometry
identify in hexadecimal
media media type
model manufacturer's model number
settings drive settings
smart_thresholds in hexadecimal
smart_values in hexadecimal
The hdparm(8) utility provides access to this information in a friendly format.
/proc/interrupts
This is used to record the number of interrupts per each IRQ on (at least) the i386 architecture. Very
easy to read formatting, done in ASCII.
/proc/iomem
I/O memory map in Linux 2.4.
/proc/ioports
This is a list of currently registered Input-Output port regions that are in use.
/proc/kallsyms (since Linux 2.5.71)
This holds the kernel exported symbol definitions used by the modules(X) tools to dynamically link and
bind loadable modules. In Linux 2.5.47 and earlier, a similar file with slightly different syntax was
named ksyms.
/proc/kcore
This file represents the physical memory of the system and is stored in the ELF core file format. With
this pseudo-file, and an unstripped kernel (/usr/src/linux/vmlinux) binary, GDB can be used to examine the
current state of any kernel data structures.
The total length of the file is the size of physical memory (RAM) plus 4KB.
/proc/kmsg
This file can be used instead of the syslog(2) system call to read kernel messages. A process must have
superuser privileges to read this file, and only one process should read this file. This file should not
be read if a syslog process is running which uses the syslog(2) system call facility to log kernel mes-
sages.
Information in this file is retrieved with the dmesg(8) program.
/proc/ksyms (Linux 1.1.23-2.5.47)
See /proc/kallsyms.
/proc/loadavg
The first three fields in this file are load average figures giving the number of jobs in the run queue
(state R) or waiting for disk I/O (state D) averaged over 1, 5, and 15 minutes. They are the same as the
load average numbers given by uptime(1) and other programs. The fourth field consists of two numbers sep-
arated by a slash (/). The first of these is the number of currently executing kernel scheduling entities
(processes, threads); this will be less than or equal to the number of CPUs. The value after the slash is
the number of kernel scheduling entities that currently exist on the system. The fifth field is the PID
of the process that was most recently created on the system.
/proc/locks
This file shows current file locks (flock(2) and fcntl(2)) and leases (fcntl(2)).
/proc/malloc
This file is only present if CONFIGDEBUGMALLOC was defined during compilation.
/proc/meminfo
This is used by free(1) to report the amount of free and used memory (both physical and swap) on the sys-
tem as well as the shared memory and buffers used by the kernel.
It is in the same format as free(1), except in bytes rather than KB.
/proc/mounts
This is a list of all the file systems currently mounted on the system. The format of this file is docu-
mented in fstab(5). Since kernel version 2.6.15, this file is pollable: after opening the file for read-
ing, a change in this file (i.e., a file system mount or unmount) causes select(2) to mark the file
descriptor as readable, and poll(2) and epoll_wait(2) mark the file as having an error condition.
/proc/modules
A text list of the modules that have been loaded by the system. See also lsmod(8).
/proc/mtrr
Memory Type Range Registers. See /usr/src/linux/Documentation/mtrr.txt for details.
/proc/net
various net pseudo-files, all of which give the status of some part of the networking layer. These files
contain ASCII structures and are, therefore, readable with cat. However, the standard netstat(8) suite
provides much cleaner access to these files.
/proc/net/arp
This holds an ASCII readable dump of the kernel ARP table used for address resolutions. It will show both
dynamically learned and pre-programmed ARP entries. The format is:
IP address HW type Flags HW address Mask Device
192.168.0.50 0x1 0x2 00:50:BF:25:68:F3 * eth0
192.168.0.250 0x1 0xc 00:00:00:00:00:00 * eth0
Here 'IP address' is the IPv4 address of the machine and the 'HW type' is the hardware type of the address
from RFC 826. The flags are the internal flags of the ARP structure (as defined in
/usr/include/linux/if_arp.h) and the 'HW address' is the data link layer mapping for that IP address if it
is known.
/proc/net/dev
The dev pseudo-file contains network device status information. This gives the number of received and sent
packets, the number of errors and collisions and other basic statistics. These are used by the ifconfig(8)
program to report device status. The format is:
Inter-| Receive | Transmit
face |bytes packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|bytes packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
lo: 2776770 11307 0 0 0 0 0 0 2776770 11307 0 0 0 0 0 0
eth0: 1215645 2751 0 0 0 0 0 0 1782404 4324 0 0 0 427 0 0
ppp0: 1622270 5552 1 0 0 0 0 0 354130 5669 0 0 0 0 0 0
tap0: 7714 81 0 0 0 0 0 0 7714 81 0 0 0 0 0 0
/proc/net/dev_mcast
Defined in /usr/src/linux/net/core/dev_mcast.c:
indx interface_name dmi_u dmi_g dmi_address
2 eth0 1 0 01005e000001
3 eth1 1 0 01005e000001
4 eth2 1 0 01005e000001
/proc/net/igmp
Internet Group Management Protocol. Defined in /usr/src/linux/net/core/igmp.c.
/proc/net/rarp
This file uses the same format as the arp file and contains the current reverse mapping database used to
provide rarp(8) reverse address lookup services. If RARP is not configured into the kernel, this file will
not be present.
/proc/net/raw
Holds a dump of the RAW socket table. Much of the information is not of use apart from debugging. The 'sl'
value is the kernel hash slot for the socket, the 'local address' is the local address and protocol number
pair."St" is the internal status of the socket. The "tx_queue" and "rx_queue" are the outgoing and incom-
ing data queue in terms of kernel memory usage. The "tr", "tm->when", and "rexmits" fields are not used
by RAW. The "uid" field holds the effective UID of the creator of the socket.
/proc/net/snmp
This file holds the ASCII data needed for the IP, ICMP, TCP, and UDP management information bases for an
snmp agent.
/proc/net/tcp
Holds a dump of the TCP socket table. Much of the information is not of use apart from debugging. The "sl"
value is the kernel hash slot for the socket, the "local address" is the local address and port number
pair. The "remote address" is the remote address and port number pair (if connected). 'St' is the inter-
nal status of the socket. The 'tx_queue' and 'rx_queue' are the outgoing and incoming data queue in terms
of kernel memory usage. The "tr", "tm->when", and "rexmits" fields hold internal information of the ker-
nel socket state and are only useful for debugging. The "uid" field holds the effective UID of the cre-
ator of the socket.
/proc/net/udp
Holds a dump of the UDP socket table. Much of the information is not of use apart from debugging. The "sl"
value is the kernel hash slot for the socket, the "local address" is the local address and port number
pair. The "remote address" is the remote address and port number pair (if connected). "St" is the inter-
nal status of the socket. The "tx_queue" and "rx_queue" are the outgoing and incoming data queue in terms
of kernel memory usage. The "tr", "tm->when", and "rexmits" fields are not used by UDP. The "uid" field
holds the effective UID of the creator of the socket. The format is:
sl local_address rem_address st tx_queue rx_queue tr rexmits tm->when uid
1: 01642C89:0201 0C642C89:03FF 01 00000000:00000001 01:000071BA 00000000 0
1: 00000000:0801 00000000:0000 0A 00000000:00000000 00:00000000 6F000100 0
1: 00000000:0201 00000000:0000 0A 00000000:00000000 00:00000000 00000000 0
/proc/net/unix
Lists the UNIX domain sockets present within the system and their status. The format is:
Num RefCount Protocol Flags Type St Path
0: 00000002 00000000 00000000 0001 03
1: 00000001 00000000 00010000 0001 01 /dev/printer
Here 'Num' is the kernel table slot number, 'RefCount' is the number of users of the socket, 'Protocol' is
currently always 0, 'Flags' represent the internal kernel flags holding the status of the socket. Cur-
rently, type is always '1' (Unix domain datagram sockets are not yet supported in the kernel). 'St' is the
internal state of the socket and Path is the bound path (if any) of the socket.
/proc/partitions
Contains major and minor numbers of each partition as well as number of blocks and partition name.
/proc/pci
This is a listing of all PCI devices found during kernel initialization and their configuration.
/proc/scsi
A directory with the scsi mid-level pseudo-file and various SCSI lowlevel driver directories, which con-
tain a file for each SCSI host in this system, all of which give the status of some part of the SCSI IO
subsystem. These files contain ASCII structures and are, therefore, readable with cat.
You can also write to some of the files to reconfigure the subsystem or switch certain features on or off.
/proc/scsi/scsi
This is a listing of all SCSI devices known to the kernel. The listing is similar to the one seen during
bootup. scsi currently supports only the add-single-device command which allows root to add a hotplugged
device to the list of known devices.
An echo 'scsi add-single-device 1 0 5 0' > /proc/scsi/scsi will cause host scsi1 to scan on SCSI channel 0
for a device on ID 5 LUN 0. If there is already a device known on this address or the address is invalid,
an error will be returned.
/proc/scsi/[drivername]
[drivername] can currently be NCR53c7xx, aha152x, aha1542, aha1740, aic7xxx, buslogic, eata_dma, eata_pio,
fdomain, in2000, pas16, qlogic, scsi_debug, seagate, t128, u15-24f, ultrastore, or wd7000. These directo-
ries show up for all drivers that registered at least one SCSI HBA. Every directory contains one file per
registered host. Every host-file is named after the number the host was assigned during initialization.
Reading these files will usually show driver and host configuration, statistics etc.
Writing to these files allows different things on different hosts. For example, with the latency and
nolatency commands, root can switch on and off command latency measurement code in the eata_dma driver.
With the lockup and unlock commands, root can control bus lockups simulated by the scsi_debug driver.
/proc/self
This directory refers to the process accessing the /proc filesystem, and is identical to the /proc direc-
tory named by the process ID of the same process.
/proc/slabinfo
Information about kernel caches. The columns are:
cache-name
num-active-objs
total-objs
object-size
num-active-slabs
total-slabs
num-pages-per-slab
See slabinfo(5) for details.
/proc/stat
kernel/system statistics. Varies with architecture. Common entries include:
cpu 3357 0 4313 1362393
The amount of time, measured in units of USER_HZ (1/100ths of a second on most architectures), that
the system spent in user mode, user mode with low priority (nice), system mode, and the idle task,
respectively. The last value should be USER_HZ times the second entry in the uptime pseudo-file.
In Linux 2.6 this line includes three additional columns: iowait - time waiting for I/O to complete
(since 2.5.41); irq - time servicing interrupts (since 2.6.0-test4); softirq - time servicing
softirqs (since 2.6.0-test4).
page 5741 1808
The number of pages the system paged in and the number that were paged out (from disk).
swap 1 0
The number of swap pages that have been brought in and out.
intr 1462898
This line shows counts of interrupts serviced since boot time, for each of the possible system
interrupts. The first column is the total of all interrupts serviced; each subsequent column is
the total for a particular interrupt.
disk_io: (2,0):(31,30,5764,1,2) (3,0):...
(major,minor):(noinfo, read_io_ops, blks_read, write_io_ops, blks_written)
(Linux 2.4 only)
ctxt 115315
The number of context switches that the system underwent.
btime 769041601
boot time, in seconds since the epoch (January 1, 1970).
processes 86031
Number of forks since boot.
procs_running 6
Number of processes in runnable state. (Linux 2.5.45 onwards.)
procs_blocked 2
Number of processes blocked waiting for I/O to complete. (Linux 2.5.45 onwards.)
/proc/swaps
Swap areas in use. See also swapon(8).
/proc/sys
This directory (present since 1.3.57) contains a number of files and subdirectories corresponding to ker-
nel variables. These variables can be read and sometimes modified using the proc file system, and the
sysctl(2) system call. Presently, there are subdirectories abi, debug, dev, fs, kernel, net, proc, rxrpc,
sunrpc and vm that each contain more files and subdirectories.
/proc/sys/abi
This directory may contain files with application binary information. On some systems, it is not present.
/proc/sys/debug
This directory may be empty.
/proc/sys/dev
This directory contains device specific information (eg dev/cdrom/info). On some systems, it may be
empty.
/proc/sys/fs
This contains the subdirectories binfmt_misc, inotify, and mqueue, and files dentry-state, dir-notify-
enable, dquot-nr, file-max, file-nr, inode-max, inode-nr, inode-state, lease-break-time, leases-enable,
overflowgid, overflowuid, suid_dumpable, super-max, and super-nr.
/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
Documentation for files in this directory can be found in the kernel sources in Documenta-
tion/binfmt_misc.txt.
/proc/sys/fs/dentry-state
This file contains six numbers, nr_dentry, nr_unused, age_limit (age in seconds), want_pages (pages
requested by system) and two dummy values. nr_dentry seems to be 0 all the time. nr_unused seems to be
the number of unused dentries. age_limit is the age in seconds after which dcache entries can be
reclaimed when memory is short and want_pages is non-zero when the kernel has called shrink_dcache_pages()
and the dcache isn't pruned yet.
/proc/sys/fs/dir-notify-enable
This file can be used to disable or enable the dnotify interface described in fcntl(2) on a system-wide
basis. A value of 0 in this file disables the interface, and a value of 1 enables it.
/proc/sys/fs/dquot-max
This file shows the maximum number of cached disk quota entries. On some (2.4) systems, it is not
present. If the number of free cached disk quota entries is very low and you have some awesome number of
simultaneous system users, you might want to raise the limit.
/proc/sys/fs/dquot-nr
This file shows the number of allocated disk quota entries and the number of free disk quota entries.
/proc/sys/fs/file-max
This file defines a system-wide limit on the number of open files for all processes. (See also setr-
limit(2), which can be used by a process to set the per-process limit, RLIMIT_NOFILE, on the number of
files it may open.) If you get lots of error messages about running out of file handles, try increasing
this value:
echo 100000 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
The kernel constant NR_OPEN imposes an upper limit on the value that may be placed in file-max.
If you increase /proc/sys/fs/file-max, be sure to increase /proc/sys/fs/inode-max to 3-4 times the new
value of /proc/sys/fs/file-max, or you will run out of inodes.
/proc/sys/fs/file-nr
This (read-only) file gives the number of files presently opened. It contains three numbers: The number
of allocated file handles, the number of free file handles and the maximum number of file handles. The
kernel allocates file handles dynamically, but it doesn't free them again. If the number of allocated
files is close to the
maximum, you should consider increasing the maximum. When the number of free file handles is large,
you've encountered a peak in your usage of file handles and you probably don't need to increase the maxi-
mum.
/proc/sys/fs/inode-max
This file contains the maximum number of in-memory inodes. On some (2.4) systems, it may not be present.
This value should be 3-4 times larger than the value in file-max, since stdin, stdout and network sockets
also need an inode to handle them. When you regularly run out of inodes, you need to increase this value.
/proc/sys/fs/inode-nr
This file contains the first two values from inode-state.
/proc/sys/fs/inode-state
This file contains seven numbers: nr_inodes, nr_free_inodes, preshrink and four dummy values. nr_inodes
is the number of inodes the system has allocated. This can be slightly more than inode-max because Linux
allocates them one page full at a time. nr_free_inodes represents the number of free inodes. preshrink
is non-zero when the nr_inodes > inode-max and the system needs to prune the inode list instead of allo-
cating more.
/proc/sys/fs/inotify (since Linux 2.6.13)
This directory contains files max_queued_events, max_user_instances, and max_user_watches, that can be
used to limit the amount of kernel memory consumed by the inotify interface. For further details, see
inotify(7).
/proc/sys/fs/lease-break-time
This file specifies the grace period that the kernel grants to a process holding a file lease (fcntl(2))
after it has sent a signal to that process notifying it that another process is waiting to open the file.
If the lease holder does not remove or downgrade the lease within this grace period, the kernel forcibly
breaks the lease.
/proc/sys/fs/leases-enable
This file can be used to enable or disable file leases (fcntl(2)) on a system-wide basis. If this file
contains the value 0, leases are disabled. A non-zero value enables leases.
/proc/sys/fs/mqueue (since Linux 2.6.6)
This directory contains files msg_max, msgsize_max, and queues_max, controlling the resources used by
POSIX message queues. See mq_overview(7) for details.
/proc/sys/fs/overflowgid and /proc/sys/fs/overflowuid
These files allow you to change the value of the fixed UID and GID. The default is 65534. Some filesys-
tems only support 16-bit UIDs and GIDs, although in Linux UIDs and GIDs are 32 bits. When one of these
filesystems is mounted with writes enabled, any UID or GID that would exceed 65535 is translated to the
overflow value before being written to disk.
/proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable (since Linux 2.6.13)
The value in this file determines whether core dump files are produced for set-user-ID or otherwise pro-
tected/tainted binaries. Three different integer values can be specified:
0 (default) This provides the traditional (pre-Linux 2.6.13) behaviour. A core dump will not be produced
for a process which has changed credentials (by calling seteuid(2), setgid(2), or similar, or by executing
a set-user-ID or set-group-ID program) or whose binary does not have read permission enabled.
1 ("debug") All processes dump core when possible. The core dump is owned by the file system user ID of
the dumping process and no security is applied. This is intended for system debugging situations only.
Ptrace is unchecked.
2 ("suidsafe") Any binary which normally would not be dumped (see "0" above) is dumped readable by root
only. This allows the user to remove the core dump file but not to read it. For security reasons core
dumps in this mode will not overwrite one another or other files. This mode is appropriate when adminis-
trators are attempting to debug problems in a normal environment.
/proc/sys/fs/super-max
This file controls the maximum number of superblocks, and thus the maximum number of mounted filesystems
the kernel can have. You only need to increase super-max if you need to mount more filesystems than the
current value in super-max allows you to.
/proc/sys/fs/super-nr
This file contains the number of filesystems currently mounted.
/proc/sys/kernel
This directory contains files acct, cad_pid, cap-bound, core_pattern, core_uses_pid, ctrl-alt-del, dentry-
state, domainname, hotplug, hostname, htab-reclaim (PowerPC only), java-appletviewer (binfmt_java, obso-
lete), java-interpreter (binfmt_java, obsolete), l2cr (PowerPC only), modprobe, msgmax, msgmnb, msgmni,
osrelease, ostype, overflowgid, overflowuid, panic, panic_on_oops, pid_max, powersave-nap (PowerPC only),
printk, pty, random, real-root-dev, reboot-cmd (SPARC only), rtsig-max, rtsig-nr, sem, sg-big-buff,
shmall, shmmax, shmmni, sysrq, tainted, threads-max, version, and zero-paged (PowerPC only).
/proc/sys/kernel/acct
This file contains three numbers: highwater, lowwater and frequency. If BSD-style process accounting is
enabled these values control its behaviour. If free space on filesystem where the log lives goes below
lowwater percent accounting suspends. If free space gets above highwater percent accounting resumes. Fre-
quency determines how often the kernel checks the amount of free space (value is in seconds). Default val-
ues are 4, 2 and 30. That is, suspend accounting if <= 2% of space is free; resume it if >= 4% of space
is free; consider information about amount of free space valid for 30 seconds.
/proc/sys/kernel/cap-bound
This file holds the value of the kernel capability bounding set (expressed as a signed decimal number).
This set is ANDed against the capabilities permitted to a process during exec().
/proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
See core(5). /proc/sys/kernel/core_uses_pid See core(5).
/proc/sys/kernel/ctrl-alt-del
This file controls the handling of Ctrl-Alt-Del from the keyboard. When the value in this file is 0,
Ctrl-Alt-Del is trapped and sent to the init(1) program to handle a graceful restart. When the value is >
0, Linux's reaction to a Vulcan Nerve Pinch (tm) will be an immediate reboot, without even syncing its
dirty buffers. Note: when a program (like dosemu) has the keyboard in 'raw' mode, the ctrl-alt-del is
intercepted by the program before it ever reaches the kernel tty layer, and it's up to the program to
decide what to do with it.
/proc/sys/kernel/hotplug
This file contains the path for the hotplug policy agent. The default value in this file "/sbin/hotplug".
/proc/sys/kernel/domainname and /proc/sys/kernel/hostname
can be used to set the NIS/YP domainname and the hostname of your box in exactly the same way as the com-
mands domainname and hostname, i.e.:
# echo "darkstar" > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname
# echo "mydomain" > /proc/sys/kernel/domainname
has the same effect as
# hostname "darkstar"
# domainname "mydomain"
Note, however, that the classic darkstar.frop.org has the hostname "darkstar" and DNS (Internet Domain
Name Server) domainname "frop.org", not to be confused with the NIS (Network Information Service) or YP
(Yellow Pages) domainname. These two domain names are in general different. For a detailed discussion see
the hostname(1) man page.
/proc/sys/kernel/htab-reclaim
(PowerPC only) If this file is set to a non-zero value, the PowerPC htab (see kernel file Documenta-
tion/powerpc/ppc_htab.txt) is pruned each time the system hits the idle loop.
/proc/sys/kernel/l2cr
(PowerPC only) This file contains a flag that controls the L2 cache of G3 processor boards. If 0, the
cache is disabled. Enabled if non-zero.
/proc/sys/kernel/modprobe
This file is described by the kernel source file Documentation/kmod.txt.
/proc/sys/kernel/msgmax
This file defines a system-wide limit specifying the maximum number of bytes in a single message written
on a System V message queue.
/proc/sys/kernel/msgmni
This file defines the system-wide limit on the number of message queue identifiers. (This file is only
present in Linux 2.4 onwards.)
/proc/sys/kernel/msgmnb
This file defines a system-wide parameter used to initialise the msg_qbytes setting for subsequently cre-
ated message queues. The msg_qbytes setting specifies the maximum number of bytes that may be written to
the message queue.
/proc/sys/kernel/ostype and /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease
These files give substrings of /proc/version.
/proc/sys/kernel/overflowgid and /proc/sys/kernel/overflowuid
These files duplicate the files /proc/sys/fs/overflowgid and /proc/sys/fs/overflowuid.
/proc/sys/kernel/panic
gives read/write access to the kernel variable panic_timeout. If this is zero, the kernel will loop on a
panic; if non-zero it indicates that the kernel should autoreboot after this number of seconds. When you
use the software watchdog device driver, the recommended setting is 60.
/proc/sys/kernel/panic_on_oops
This file (new in Linux 2.5) controls the kernel's behaviour when an oops or BUG is encountered. If this
file contains 0, then the system tries to continue operation. If it contains 1, then the system delays a
few seconds (to give klogd time to record the oops output) and then panics. If the /proc/sys/kernel/panic
file is also non-zero then the machine will be rebooted.
/proc/sys/kernel/pid_max
This file (new in Linux 2.5) specifies the value at which PIDs wrap around (i.e., the value in this file
is one greater than the maximum PID). The default value for this file, 32768, results in the same range
of PIDs as on earlier kernels. On 32-bit platfroms, 32768 is the maximum value for pid_max. On 64-bit
systems, pid_max can be set to any value up to 2^22 (PID_MAX_LIMIT, approximately 4 million).
/proc/sys/kernel/powersave-nap (PowerPC only)
This file contains a flag. If set, Linux-PPC will use the 'nap' mode of powersaving, otherwise the 'doze'
mode will be used.
/proc/sys/kernel/printk
The four values in this file are console_loglevel, default_message_loglevel, minimum_console_level and
default_console_loglevel. These values influence printk() behavior when printing or logging error
messages. See syslog(2) for more info on the different loglevels. Messages with a higher priority than
console_loglevel will be printed to the console. Messages without an explicit priority will be printed
with priority default_message_level. minimum_console_loglevel is the minimum (highest) value to which
console_loglevel can be set. default_console_loglevel is the default value for console_loglevel.
/proc/sys/kernel/pty (since Linux 2.6.4)
This directory contains two files relating to the number of Unix 98 pseudo-terminals (see pts(4)) on the
system.
/proc/sys/kernel/pty/max
This file defines the maximum number of pseudo-terminals.
/proc/sys/kernel/pty/nr
This read-only file indicates how many pseudo-terminals are currently in use.
/proc/sys/kernel/random
This directory contains various parameters controlling the operation of the file /dev/random. See ran-
dom(4) for further information.
/proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev
This file is documented in the kernel source file Documentation/initrd.txt.
/proc/sys/kernel/reboot-cmd (Sparc only)
This file seems to be a way to give an argument to the SPARC ROM/Flash boot loader. Maybe to tell it what
to do after rebooting?
/proc/sys/kernel/rtsig-max
(Only in kernels up to and including 2.6.7; see setrlimit(2)) This file can be used to tune the maximum
number of POSIX realtime (queued) signals that can be outstanding in the system.
/proc/sys/kernel/rtsig-nr
(Only in kernels up to and including 2.6.7.) This file shows the number POSIX realtime signals currently
queued.
/proc/sys/kernel/sem (since Linux 2.4)
This file contains 4 numbers defining limits for System V IPC semaphores. These fields are, in order:
SEMMSL The maximum semaphores per semaphore set.
SEMMNS A system-wide limit on the number of semaphores in all semaphore sets.
SEMOPM The maximum number of operations that may be specified in a semop(2) call.
SEMMNI A system-wide limit on the maximum number of semaphore identifiers.
/proc/sys/kernel/sg-big-buff
This file shows the size of the generic SCSI device (sg) buffer. You can't tune it just yet, but you
could change it on compile time by editing include/scsi/sg.h and changing the value of SG_BIG_BUFF. How-
ever, there shouldn't be any reason to change this value.
/proc/sys/kernel/shmall
This file contains the system-wide limit on the total number of pages of System V shared memory.
/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
This file can be used to query and set the run time limit on the maximum (System V IPC) shared memory seg-
ment size that can be created. Shared memory segments up to 1Gb are now supported in the kernel. This
value defaults to SHMMAX.
/proc/sys/kernel/shmmni
(available in Linux 2.4 and onwards) This file specifies the system-wide maximum number of System V shared
memory segments that can be created.
/proc/sys/kernel/version
contains a string like:
#5 Wed Feb 25 21:49:24 MET 1998.TP
The '#5' means that this is the fifth kernel built from this source base and the date behind it indicates
the time the kernel was built.
/proc/sys/kernel/zero-paged (PowerPC only)
This file contains a flag. When enabled (non-zero), Linux-PPC will pre-zero pages in the idle loop, possi-
bly speeding up get_free_pages.
/proc/sys/net
This directory contains networking stuff. Explanations for some of the files under this directory can be
found in tcp(7) and ip(7).
/proc/sys/proc
This directory may be empty.
/proc/sys/sunrpc
This directory supports Sun remote procedure call for network file system (NFS). On some systems, it is
not present.
/proc/sys/vm
This directory contains files for memory management tuning, buffer and cache management.
/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches (since Linux 2.6.16)
Writing to this file causes the kernel to drop clean caches, dentries and inodes from memory, causing that
memory to become free.
To free pagecache, use echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches; to free dentries and inodes, use echo 2 >
/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches; to free pagecache, dentries and inodes, use echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches.
Because this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the user should run
sync(8) first.
/proc/sys/vm/legacy_va_layout (since Linux 2.6.9)
If non-zero, this disable the new 32-bit memory-mapping layout; the kernel will use the legacy (2.4) lay-
out for all processes.
/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory
This file contains the kernel virtual memory accounting mode. Values are:
0: heuristic overcommit (this is the default)
1: always overcommit, never check
2: always check, never overcommit
In mode 0, calls of mmap(2) with MAP_NORESERVE set are not checked, and the default check is very weak,
leading to the risk of getting a process "OOM-killed". Under Linux 2.4 any non-zero value implies mode 1.
In mode 2 (available since Linux 2.6), the total virtual address space on the system is limited to (SS +
RAM*(r/100)), where SS is the size of the swap space, and RAM is the size of the physical memory, and r is
the contents of the file /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_ratio.
/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_ratio
See the description of /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory.
/proc/sysvipc
Subdirectory containing the pseudo-files msg, sem and shm. These files list the System V Interprocess
Communication (IPC) objects (respectively: message queues, semaphores, and shared memory) that currently
exist on the system, providing similar information to that available via ipcs(1). These files have head-
ers and are formatted (one IPC object per line) for easy understanding. svipc(7) provides further back-
ground on the information shown by these files.
/proc/tty
Subdirectory containing the pseudo-files and subdirectories for tty drivers and line disciplines.
/proc/uptime
This file contains two numbers: the uptime of the system (seconds), and the amount of time spent in idle
process (seconds).
/proc/version
This string identifies the kernel version that is currently running. It includes the contents of
/proc/sys/ostype, /proc/sys/osrelease and /proc/sys/version. For example:
Linux version 1.0.9 (quinlan@phaze) #1 Sat May 14 01:51:54 EDT 1994
/proc/vmstat (since Linux 2.6)
This file displays various virtual memory statistics.
/proc/zoneinfo (since Linux 2.6.13)
This file display information about memory zones. This is useful for analysing virtual memory behaviour.
RELATED
cat(1), find(1), free(1), mount(1), ps(1), tr(1), uptime(1), chroot(2), mmap(2), readlink(2), syslog(2),
slabinfo(5), hier(7), arp(8), dmesg(8), hdparm(8), ifconfig(8), init(8), lsmod(8), lspci(8), netstat(8),
procinfo(8), route(8)
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt
CAVEATS
Note that many strings (i.e., the environment and command line) are in the internal format, with sub-fields ter-
minated by null bytes ('\0'), so you may find that things are more readable if you use od -c or tr "\000" "\n" to
read them. Alternatively, echo `cat <file>` works well.
This manual page is incomplete, possibly inaccurate, and is the kind of thing that needs to be updated very
often.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The material on /proc/sys/fs and /proc/sys/kernel is closely based on kernel source documentation files written
by Rik van Riel.
CATEGORY