| /proc/sys | Terrehon Bowden <[email protected]>, Bodo Bauer <[email protected]> | October 7 1999 |
| 2.4.x update | Jorge Nerin <[email protected]> | November 14 2000 |
| move /proc/sys | Shen Feng <[email protected]> | April 1 2009 |
| fixes/update part 1.1 | Stefani Seibold <[email protected]> | June 9 2009 |
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://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/proc.html
If the above direction does not works for you, you could try the kernel mailing list at [email protected] and/or try to reach me at [email protected].
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...
- 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
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.
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.
Note that an open file descriptor to /proc/<pid> or to any of its contained files or subdirectories does not prevent <pid> being reused for some other process in the event that <pid> exits. Operations on open /proc/<pid> file descriptors corresponding to dead processes never act on any new process that the kernel may, through chance, have also assigned the process ID <pid>. Instead, operations on these FDs usually fail with ESRCH.
| 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 | Present with CONFIG_KALLSYMS=y: it shows the kernel function symbol the task is blocked in - or "0" if not blocked. |
| pagemap | Page table |
| stack | Report full stack trace, enable via CONFIG_STACKTRACE |
| smaps | An extension based on maps, showing the memory consumption of each mapping and flags associated with it |
| smaps_rollup | Accumulated smaps stats for all mappings of the process. This can be derived from smaps, but is faster and more convenient |
| numa_maps | An extension based on maps, showing the memory locality and binding policy as well as mem usage (in pages) of each mapping. |
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) Tgid: 5452 Pid: 5452 PPid: 743 TracerPid: 0 (2.4) Uid: 501 501 501 501 Gid: 100 100 100 100 FDSize: 256 Groups: 100 14 16 VmPeak: 5004 kB VmSize: 5004 kB VmLck: 0 kB VmHWM: 476 kB VmRSS: 476 kB RssAnon: 352 kB RssFile: 120 kB RssShmem: 4 kB VmData: 156 kB VmStk: 88 kB VmExe: 68 kB VmLib: 1412 kB VmPTE: 20 kb VmSwap: 0 kB HugetlbPages: 0 kB CoreDumping: 0 THP_enabled: 1 Threads: 1 SigQ: 0/28578 SigPnd: 0000000000000000 ShdPnd: 0000000000000000 SigBlk: 0000000000000000 SigIgn: 0000000000000000 SigCgt: 0000000000000000 CapInh: 00000000fffffeff CapPrm: 0000000000000000 CapEff: 0000000000000000 CapBnd: ffffffffffffffff CapAmb: 0000000000000000 NoNewPrivs: 0 Seccomp: 0 Speculation_Store_Bypass: thread vulnerable voluntary_ctxt_switches: 0 nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches: 1
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. But you get a more detailed view of the process by reading the file /proc/PID/status. It fields are described in table 1-2.
The statm file contains more detailed information about the process memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-3. The stat file contains detailed information about the process itself. Its fields are explained in Table 1-4.
(for SMP CONFIG users)
For making accounting scalable, RSS related information are handled in an asynchronous manner and the value may not be very precise. To see a precise snapshot of a moment, you can see /proc/<pid>/smaps file and scan page table. It's slow but very precise.
| Field | Content |
|---|---|
| Name | filename of the executable |
| Umask | file mode creation mask |
| State | state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped) |
| Tgid | thread group ID |
| Ngid | NUMA group ID (0 if none) |
| Pid | process id |
| PPid | process id of the parent process |
| TracerPid | PID of process tracing this process (0 if not) |
| Uid | Real, effective, saved set, and file system UIDs |
| Gid | Real, effective, saved set, and file system GIDs |
| FDSize | number of file descriptor slots currently allocated |
| Groups | supplementary group list |
| NStgid | descendant namespace thread group ID hierarchy |
| NSpid | descendant namespace process ID hierarchy |
| NSpgid | descendant namespace process group ID hierarchy |
| NSsid | descendant namespace session ID hierarchy |
| VmPeak | peak virtual memory size |
| VmSize | total program size |
| VmLck | locked memory size |
| VmPin | pinned memory size |
| VmHWM | peak resident set size ("high water mark") |
| VmRSS | size of memory portions. It contains the three following parts (VmRSS = RssAnon + RssFile + RssShmem) |
| RssAnon | size of resident anonymous memory |
| RssFile | size of resident file mappings |
| RssShmem | size of resident shmem memory (includes SysV shm, mapping of tmpfs and shared anonymous mappings) |
| VmData | size of private data segments |
| VmStk | size of stack segments |
| VmExe | size of text segment |
| VmLib | size of shared library code |
| VmPTE | size of page table entries |
| VmSwap | amount of swap used by anonymous private data (shmem swap usage is not included) |
| HugetlbPages | size of hugetlb memory portions |
| CoreDumping | process's memory is currently being dumped (killing the process may lead to a corrupted core) |
| THP_enabled | process is allowed to use THP (returns 0 when PR_SET_THP_DISABLE is set on the process |
| Threads | number of threads |
| SigQ | number of signals queued/max. number for queue |
| SigPnd | bitmap of pending signals for the thread |
| ShdPnd | bitmap of shared pending signals for the process |
| SigBlk | bitmap of blocked signals |
| SigIgn | bitmap of ignored signals |
| SigCgt | bitmap of caught signals |
| CapInh | bitmap of inheritable capabilities |
| CapPrm | bitmap of permitted capabilities |
| CapEff | bitmap of effective capabilities |
| CapBnd | bitmap of capabilities bounding set |
| CapAmb | bitmap of ambient capabilities |
| NoNewPrivs | no_new_privs, like prctl(PR_GET_NO_NEW_PRIV, ...) |
| Seccomp | seccomp mode, like prctl(PR_GET_SECCOMP, ...) |
| Speculation_Store_Bypass | speculative store bypass mitigation status |
| Cpus_allowed | mask of CPUs on which this process may run |
| Cpus_allowed_list | Same as previous, but in "list format" |
| Mems_allowed | mask of memory nodes allowed to this process |
| Mems_allowed_list | Same as previous, but in "list format" |
| voluntary_ctxt_switches | number of voluntary context switches |
| nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches | number of non voluntary context switches |
| 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, same as RssFile+RssShmem in status) |
| trs | number of pages that are 'code' | (not including libs; broken, includes data segment) |
| lrs | number of pages of library | (always 0 on 2.6) |
| drs | number of pages of data/stack | (including libs; broken, includes library text) |
| dt | number of dirty pages | (always 0 on 2.6) |
| Field | Content |
|---|---|
| pid | process id |
| tcomm | filename of the executable |
| state | state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped) |
| ppid | process id of the parent process |
| pgrp | pgrp of the process |
| sid | session id |
| tty_nr | tty the process uses |
| tty_pgrp | pgrp of the tty |
| flags | task flags |
| min_flt | number of minor faults |
| cmin_flt | number of minor faults with child's |
| maj_flt | number of major faults |
| cmaj_flt | number of major faults with child's |
| utime | user mode jiffies |
| stime | kernel mode jiffies |
| cutime | user mode jiffies with child's |
| cstime | kernel mode jiffies with child's |
| priority | priority level |
| nice | nice level |
| num_threads | number of threads |
| it_real_value | (obsolete, always 0) |
| start_time | time the process started after system boot |
| vsize | virtual memory size |
| rss | resident set memory size |
| rsslim | current limit in bytes on the rss |
| start_code | address above which program text can run |
| end_code | address below which program text can run |
| start_stack | address of the start of the main process stack |
| esp | current value of ESP |
| eip | current value of EIP |
| pending | bitmap of pending signals |
| blocked | bitmap of blocked signals |
| sigign | bitmap of ignored signals |
| sigcatch | bitmap of caught signals |
| 0 | (place holder, used to be the wchan address, use /proc/PID/wchan instead) |
| 0 | (place holder) |
| 0 | (place holder) |
| exit_signal | signal to send to parent thread on exit |
| task_cpu | which CPU the task is scheduled on |
| rt_priority | realtime priority |
| policy | scheduling policy (man sched_setscheduler) |
| blkio_ticks | time spent waiting for block IO |
| gtime | guest time of the task in jiffies |
| cgtime | guest time of the task children in jiffies |
| start_data | address above which program data+bss is placed |
| end_data | address below which program data+bss is placed |
| start_brk | address above which program heap can be expanded with brk() |
| arg_start | address above which program command line is placed |
| arg_end | address below which program command line is placed |
| env_start | address above which program environment is placed |
| env_end | address below which program environment is placed |
| exit_code | the thread's exit_code in the form reported by the waitpid system call |
The /proc/PID/maps file contains the currently mapped memory regions and their access permissions.
The format is:
address perms offset dev inode pathname 08048000-08049000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8312 /opt/test 08049000-0804a000 rw-p 00001000 03:00 8312 /opt/test 0804a000-0806b000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [heap] a7cb1000-a7cb2000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0 a7cb2000-a7eb2000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 a7eb2000-a7eb3000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0 a7eb3000-a7ed5000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 a7ed5000-a8008000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 4222 /lib/libc.so.6 a8008000-a800a000 r--p 00133000 03:00 4222 /lib/libc.so.6 a800a000-a800b000 rw-p 00135000 03:00 4222 /lib/libc.so.6 a800b000-a800e000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 a800e000-a8022000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 14462 /lib/libpthread.so.0 a8022000-a8023000 r--p 00013000 03:00 14462 /lib/libpthread.so.0 a8023000-a8024000 rw-p 00014000 03:00 14462 /lib/libpthread.so.0 a8024000-a8027000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 a8027000-a8043000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8317 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 a8043000-a8044000 r--p 0001b000 03:00 8317 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 a8044000-a8045000 rw-p 0001c000 03:00 8317 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 aff35000-aff4a000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [stack] ffffe000-fffff000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0 [vdso]
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 mapping, "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 (uninitialized data). The "pathname" shows the name associated file for this mapping. If the mapping is not associated with a file:
[heap] the heap of the program [stack] the stack of the main process [vdso] the "virtual dynamic shared object", the kernel system call handler or if empty, the mapping is anonymous.
The /proc/PID/smaps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory consumption for each of the process's mappings. For each mapping (aka Virtual Memory Area, or VMA) there is a series of lines such as the following:
08048000-080bc000 r-xp 00000000 03:02 13130 /bin/bash Size: 1084 kB KernelPageSize: 4 kB MMUPageSize: 4 kB Rss: 892 kB Pss: 374 kB Shared_Clean: 892 kB Shared_Dirty: 0 kB Private_Clean: 0 kB Private_Dirty: 0 kB Referenced: 892 kB Anonymous: 0 kB LazyFree: 0 kB AnonHugePages: 0 kB ShmemPmdMapped: 0 kB Shared_Hugetlb: 0 kB Private_Hugetlb: 0 kB Swap: 0 kB SwapPss: 0 kB KernelPageSize: 4 kB MMUPageSize: 4 kB Locked: 0 kB THPeligible: 0 VmFlags: rd ex mr mw me dw
The first of these lines shows the same information as is displayed for the mapping in /proc/PID/maps. Following lines show the size of the mapping (size); the size of each page allocated when backing a VMA (KernelPageSize), which is usually the same as the size in the page table entries; the page size used by the MMU when backing a VMA (in most cases, the same as KernelPageSize); the amount of the mapping that is currently resident in RAM (RSS); the process' proportional share of this mapping (PSS); and the number of clean and dirty shared and private pages in the mapping.
The "proportional set size" (PSS) of a process is the count of pages it has in memory, where each page is divided by the number of processes sharing it. So if a process has 1000 pages all to itself, and 1000 shared with one other process, its PSS will be 1500.
Note that even a page which is part of a MAP_SHARED mapping, but has only a single pte mapped, i.e. is currently used by only one process, is accounted as private and not as shared.
"Referenced" indicates the amount of memory currently marked as referenced or accessed.
"Anonymous" shows the amount of memory that does not belong to any file. Even a mapping associated with a file may contain anonymous pages: when MAP_PRIVATE and a page is modified, the file page is replaced by a private anonymous copy.
"LazyFree" shows the amount of memory which is marked by madvise(MADV_FREE). The memory isn't freed immediately with madvise(). It's freed in memory pressure if the memory is clean. Please note that the printed value might be lower than the real value due to optimizations used in the current implementation. If this is not desirable please file a bug report.
"AnonHugePages" shows the ammount of memory backed by transparent hugepage.
"ShmemPmdMapped" shows the ammount of shared (shmem/tmpfs) memory backed by huge pages.
"Shared_Hugetlb" and "Private_Hugetlb" show the ammounts of memory backed by hugetlbfs page which is not counted in "RSS" or "PSS" field for historical reasons. And these are not included in {Shared,Private}_{Clean,Dirty} field.
"Swap" shows how much would-be-anonymous memory is also used, but out on swap.
For shmem mappings, "Swap" includes also the size of the mapped (and not replaced by copy-on-write) part of the underlying shmem object out on swap. "SwapPss" shows proportional swap share of this mapping. Unlike "Swap", this does not take into account swapped out page of underlying shmem objects. "Locked" indicates whether the mapping is locked in memory or not. "THPeligible" indicates whether the mapping is eligible for allocating THP pages - 1 if true, 0 otherwise. It just shows the current status.
"VmFlags" field deserves a separate description. This member represents the kernel flags associated with the particular virtual memory area in two letter encoded manner. The codes are the following:
rd readable wr writeable ex executable sh shared mr may read mw may write me may execute ms may share gd stack segment growns down pf pure PFN range dw disabled write to the mapped file lo pages are locked in memory io memory mapped I/O area sr sequential read advise provided rr random read advise provided dc do not copy area on fork de do not expand area on remapping ac area is accountable nr swap space is not reserved for the area ht area uses huge tlb pages ar architecture specific flag dd do not include area into core dump sd soft dirty flag mm mixed map area hg huge page advise flag nh no huge page advise flag mg mergable advise flag bt arm64 BTI guarded page
Note that there is no guarantee that every flag and associated mnemonic will be present in all further kernel releases. Things get changed, the flags may be vanished or the reverse -- new added. Interpretation of their meaning might change in future as well. So each consumer of these flags has to follow each specific kernel version for the exact semantic.
This file is only present if the CONFIG_MMU kernel configuration option is enabled.
Note: reading /proc/PID/maps or /proc/PID/smaps is inherently racy (consistent output can be achieved only in the single read call).
This typically manifests when doing partial reads of these files while the memory map is being modified. Despite the races, we do provide the following guarantees:
- The mapped addresses never go backwards, which implies no two regions will ever overlap.
- If there is something at a given vaddr during the entirety of the life of the smaps/maps walk, there will be some output for it.
The /proc/PID/smaps_rollup file includes the same fields as /proc/PID/smaps, but their values are the sums of the corresponding values for all mappings of the process. Additionally, it contains these fields:
- Pss_Anon
- Pss_File
- Pss_Shmem
They represent the proportional shares of anonymous, file, and shmem pages, as described for smaps above. These fields are omitted in smaps since each mapping identifies the type (anon, file, or shmem) of all pages it contains. Thus all information in smaps_rollup can be derived from smaps, but at a significantly higher cost.
The /proc/PID/clear_refs is used to reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG bits on both physical and virtual pages associated with a process, and the soft-dirty bit on pte (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/soft-dirty.rst for details). To clear the bits for all the pages associated with the process:
> echo 1 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
To clear the bits for the anonymous pages associated with the process:
> echo 2 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
To clear the bits for the file mapped pages associated with the process:
> echo 3 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
To clear the soft-dirty bit:
> echo 4 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
To reset the peak resident set size ("high water mark") to the process's current value:
> echo 5 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
Any other value written to /proc/PID/clear_refs will have no effect.
The /proc/pid/pagemap gives the PFN, which can be used to find the pageflags using /proc/kpageflags and number of times a page is mapped using /proc/kpagecount. For detailed explanation, see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst.
The /proc/pid/numa_maps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory locality and binding policy, as well as the memory usage (in pages) of each mapping. The output follows a general format where mapping details get summarized separated by blank spaces, one mapping per each file line:
address policy mapping details 00400000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app mapped=1 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4 00600000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4 3206000000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so mapped=26 mapmax=6 N0=24 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4 320621f000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4 3206220000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4 3206221000 default anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4 3206800000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so mapped=59 mapmax=21 active=55 N0=41 N3=18 kernelpagesize_kB=4 320698b000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so 3206b8a000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=2 dirty=2 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4 3206b8e000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4 3206b8f000 default anon=3 dirty=3 active=1 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4 7f4dc10a2000 default anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4 7f4dc10b4000 default anon=2 dirty=2 active=1 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4 7f4dc1200000 default file=/anon_hugepage\040(deleted) huge anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=2048 7fff335f0000 default stack anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4 7fff3369d000 default mapped=1 mapmax=35 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
Where:
"address" is the starting address for the mapping;
"policy" reports the NUMA memory policy set for the mapping (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numa_memory_policy.rst);
"mapping details" summarizes mapping data such as mapping type, page usage counters, node locality page counters (N0 == node0, N1 == node1, ...) and the kernel page size, in KB, that is backing the mapping up.
Similar to the process entries, the kernel data files give information about the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in /proc and are listed in Table 1-5. Not all of these will be present in your system. It depends on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which files are there, and which are missing.
| File | Content |
|---|---|
| apm | Advanced power management info |
| buddyinfo | Kernel memory allocator information (see text) (2.5) |
| bus | Directory containing bus specific information |
| cmdline | Kernel command line |
| cpuinfo | Info about the CPU |
| devices | Available devices (block and character) |
| dma | Used DMS channels |
| filesystems | Supported filesystems |
| driver | Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc (2.4) |
| execdomains | Execdomains, related to security (2.4) |
| fb | Frame Buffer devices (2.4) |
| fs | File system parameters, currently nfs/exports (2.4) |
| ide | Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem |
| interrupts | Interrupt usage |
| iomem | Memory map (2.4) |
| ioports | I/O port usage |
| irq | Masks for irq to cpu affinity (2.4)(smp?) |
| isapnp | ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info (2.4) |
| kcore | Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4)) |
| kmsg | Kernel messages |
| ksyms | Kernel symbol table |
| loadavg | Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes |
| locks | Kernel locks |
| meminfo | Memory info |
| misc | Miscellaneous |
| modules | List of loaded modules |
| mounts | Mounted filesystems |
| net | Networking info (see text) |
| pagetypeinfo | Additional page allocator information (see text) (2.5) |
| partitions | Table of partitions known to the system |
| pci | Deprecated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/, decoupled by lspci (2.4) |
| rtc | Real time clock |
| scsi | SCSI info (see text) |
| slabinfo | Slab pool info |
| softirqs | softirq usage |
| stat | Overall statistics |
| swaps | Swap space utilization |
| sys | See chapter 2 |
| sysvipc | Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm) (2.4) |
| tty | Info of tty drivers |
| uptime | Wall clock since boot, combined idle time of all cpus |
| version | Kernel version |
| video | bttv info of video resources (2.4) |
| vmallocinfo | Show vmalloced areas |
You can, for example, check which interrupts are currently in use and what they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts:
> cat /proc/interrupts
CPU0
0: 8728810 XT-PIC timer
1: 895 XT-PIC keyboard
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
3: 531695 XT-PIC aha152x
4: 2014133 XT-PIC serial
5: 44401 XT-PIC pcnet_cs
8: 2 XT-PIC rtc
11: 8 XT-PIC i82365
12: 182918 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
13: 1 XT-PIC fpu
14: 1232265 XT-PIC ide0
15: 7 XT-PIC ide1
NMI: 0
In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the output of a SMP machine):
> cat /proc/interrupts
CPU0 CPU1
0: 1243498 1214548 IO-APIC-edge timer
1: 8949 8958 IO-APIC-edge keyboard
2: 0 0 XT-PIC cascade
5: 11286 10161 IO-APIC-edge soundblaster
8: 1 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc
9: 27422 27407 IO-APIC-edge 3c503
12: 113645 113873 IO-APIC-edge PS/2 Mouse
13: 0 0 XT-PIC fpu
14: 22491 24012 IO-APIC-edge ide0
15: 2183 2415 IO-APIC-edge ide1
17: 30564 30414 IO-APIC-level eth0
18: 177 164 IO-APIC-level bttv
NMI: 2457961 2457959
LOC: 2457882 2457881
ERR: 2155
NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI (Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.
LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.
ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected, the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.
In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again. This time the goal was for /proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not just those considered 'most important'. The new vectors are:
- THR
- interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds a configurable threshold. Only available on some systems.
- TRM
- a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold has been exceeded for the CPU. This interrupt may also be generated when the temperature drops back to normal.
- SPU
- a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC. Hence the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from. For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.
- RES, CAL, TLB
- rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS. Typically, their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to determine the occurrence of interrupts of the given type.
The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevant. For example, the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms. Others are suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor. As of this writing, only i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.
Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4. It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity. This means that you can "hook" an IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and two files; default_smp_affinity and prof_cpu_mask.
For example:
> ls /proc/irq/ 0 10 12 14 16 18 2 4 6 8 prof_cpu_mask 1 11 13 15 17 19 3 5 7 9 default_smp_affinity > ls /proc/irq/0/ smp_affinity
smp_affinity is a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the IRQ. You can set it by doing:
> echo 1 > /proc/irq/10/smp_affinity
This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo 5 which means that only the first and third CPU can handle the IRQ.
The contents of each smp_affinity file is the same by default:
> cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity ffffffff
There is an alternate interface, smp_affinity_list which allows specifying a CPU range instead of a bitmask:
> cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity_list 1024-1031
The default_smp_affinity mask applies to all non-active IRQs, which are the IRQs which have not yet been allocated/activated, and hence which lack a /proc/irq/[0-9]* directory.
The node file on an SMP system shows the node to which the device using the IRQ reports itself as being attached. This hardware locality information does not include information about any possible driver locality preference.
prof_cpu_mask specifies which CPUs are to be profiled by the system wide profiler. Default value is ffffffff (all CPUs if there are only 32 of them).
The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the best choice for almost everyone. [Note this applies only to those IO-APIC's that support "Round Robin" interrupt distribution.]
There are three more important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys. The general rule is that the contents, or even the existence of these directories, depend on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the directory scsi may not exist. The same is true with the net, which is there only when networking support is present in the running kernel.
The slabinfo file gives information about memory usage at the slab level. Linux uses slab pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2. Commonly used objects have their own slab pool (such as network buffers, directory cache, and so on).
> cat /proc/buddyinfo Node 0, zone DMA 0 4 5 4 4 3 ... Node 0, zone Normal 1 0 0 1 101 8 ... Node 0, zone HighMem 2 0 0 1 1 0 ...
External fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a useful tool for helping diagnose these problems. Buddyinfo will give you a clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous allocation failed.
Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are available. In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc...
More information relevant to external fragmentation can be found in pagetypeinfo:
> cat /proc/pagetypeinfo Page block order: 9 Pages per block: 512 Free pages count per migrate type at order 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Node 0, zone DMA, type Unmovable 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 Node 0, zone DMA, type Reclaimable 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Node 0, zone DMA, type Movable 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 0 1 0 2 Node 0, zone DMA, type Reserve 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 Node 0, zone DMA, type Isolate 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Node 0, zone DMA32, type Unmovable 103 54 77 1 1 1 11 8 7 1 9 Node 0, zone DMA32, type Reclaimable 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 Node 0, zone DMA32, type Movable 169 152 113 91 77 54 39 13 6 1 452 Node 0, zone DMA32, type Reserve 1 2 2 2 2 0 1 1 1 1 0 Node 0, zone DMA32, type Isolate 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Number of blocks type Unmovable Reclaimable Movable Reserve Isolate Node 0, zone DMA 2 0 5 1 0 Node 0, zone DMA32 41 6 967 2 0
Fragmentation avoidance in the kernel works by grouping pages of different migrate types into the same contiguous regions of memory called page blocks. A page block is typically the size of the default hugepage size, e.g. 2MB on X86-64. By keeping pages grouped based on their ability to move, the kernel can reclaim pages within a page block to satisfy a high-order allocation.
The pagetypinfo begins with information on the size of a page block. It then gives the same type of information as buddyinfo except broken down by migrate-type and finishes with details on how many page blocks of each type exist.
If min_free_kbytes has been tuned correctly (recommendations made by hugeadm from libhugetlbfs https://github.com/libhugetlbfs/libhugetlbfs/), one can make an estimate of the likely number of huge pages that can be allocated at a given point in time. All the "Movable" blocks should be allocatable unless memory has been mlock()'d. Some of the Reclaimable blocks should also be allocatable although a lot of filesystem metadata may have to be reclaimed to achieve this.
Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory. This varies by architecture and compile options. The following is from a 16GB PIII, which has highmem enabled. You may not have all of these fields.
> cat /proc/meminfo MemTotal: 16344972 kB MemFree: 13634064 kB MemAvailable: 14836172 kB Buffers: 3656 kB Cached: 1195708 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 891636 kB Inactive: 1077224 kB HighTotal: 15597528 kB HighFree: 13629632 kB LowTotal: 747444 kB LowFree: 4432 kB SwapTotal: 0 kB SwapFree: 0 kB Dirty: 968 kB Writeback: 0 kB AnonPages: 861800 kB Mapped: 280372 kB Shmem: 644 kB KReclaimable: 168048 kB Slab: 284364 kB SReclaimable: 159856 kB SUnreclaim: 124508 kB PageTables: 24448 kB NFS_Unstable: 0 kB Bounce: 0 kB WritebackTmp: 0 kB CommitLimit: 7669796 kB Committed_AS: 100056 kB VmallocTotal: 112216 kB VmallocUsed: 428 kB VmallocChunk: 111088 kB Percpu: 62080 kB HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB AnonHugePages: 49152 kB ShmemHugePages: 0 kB ShmemPmdMapped: 0 kB
- MemTotal
- Total usable RAM (i.e. physical RAM minus a few reserved bits and the kernel binary code)
- MemFree
- The sum of LowFree+HighFree
- MemAvailable
- An estimate of how much memory is available for starting new applications, without swapping. Calculated from MemFree, SReclaimable, the size of the file LRU lists, and the low watermarks in each zone. The estimate takes into account that the system needs some page cache to function well, and that not all reclaimable slab will be reclaimable, due to items being in use. The impact of those factors will vary from system to system.
- Buffers
- Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
- Cached
- in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the pagecache). Doesn't include SwapCached
- SwapCached
- Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
- Active
- Memory that has been used more recently and usually not reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
- Inactive
- Memory which has been less recently used. It is more eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
- HighTotal, HighFree
- Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory. Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or for the pagecache. The kernel must use tricks to access this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
- LowTotal, LowFree
- Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the kernel's use for its own data structures. Among many other things, it is where everything from the Slab is allocated. Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
- SwapTotal
- total amount of swap space available
- SwapFree
- Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily on the disk
- Dirty
- Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
- Writeback
- Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
- AnonPages
- Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables
- HardwareCorrupted
- The amount of RAM/memory in KB, the kernel identifies as corrupted.
- AnonHugePages
- Non-file backed huge pages mapped into userspace page tables
- Mapped
- files which have been mmaped, such as libraries
- Shmem
- Total memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs
- ShmemHugePages
- Memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs allocated with huge pages
- ShmemPmdMapped
- Shared memory mapped into userspace with huge pages
- KReclaimable
- Kernel allocations that the kernel will attempt to reclaim under memory pressure. Includes SReclaimable (below), and other direct allocations with a shrinker.
- Slab
- in-kernel data structures cache
- SReclaimable
- Part of Slab, that might be reclaimed, such as caches
- SUnreclaim
- Part of Slab, that cannot be reclaimed on memory pressure
- PageTables
- amount of memory dedicated to the lowest level of page tables.
- NFS_Unstable
- Always zero. Previous counted pages which had been written to the server, but has not been committed to stable storage.
- Bounce
- Memory used for block device "bounce buffers"
- WritebackTmp
- Memory used by FUSE for temporary writeback buffers
- CommitLimit
Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'), this is the total amount of memory currently available to be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory').
The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula:
CommitLimit = ([total RAM pages] - [total huge TLB pages]) * overcommit_ratio / 100 + [total swap pages]For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G of swap with a vm.overcommit_ratio of 30 it would yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation in vm/overcommit-accounting.
- Committed_AS
- The amount of memory presently allocated on the system. The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G of memory, but only touches 300M of it will show up as using 1G. This 1G is memory which has been "committed" to by the VM and can be used at any time by the allocating application. With strict overcommit enabled on the system (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'), allocations which would exceed the CommitLimit (detailed above) will not be permitted. This is useful if one needs to guarantee that processes will not fail due to lack of memory once that memory has been successfully allocated.
- VmallocTotal
- total size of vmalloc memory area
- VmallocUsed
- amount of vmalloc area which is used
- VmallocChunk
- largest contiguous block of vmalloc area which is free
- Percpu
- Memory allocated to the percpu allocator used to back percpu allocations. This stat excludes the cost of metadata.
Provides information about vmalloced/vmaped areas. One line per area, containing the virtual address range of the area, size in bytes, caller information of the creator, and optional information depending on the kind of area:
pages=nr number of pages phys=addr if a physical address was specified ioremap I/O mapping (ioremap() and friends) vmalloc vmalloc() area vmap vmap()ed pages user VM_USERMAP area vpages buffer for pages pointers was vmalloced (huge area) N<node>=nr (Only on NUMA kernels) Number of pages allocated on memory node <node>
> cat /proc/vmallocinfo 0xffffc20000000000-0xffffc20000201000 2101248 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ... /0x2c0 pages=512 vmalloc N0=128 N1=128 N2=128 N3=128 0xffffc20000201000-0xffffc20000302000 1052672 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ... /0x2c0 pages=256 vmalloc N0=64 N1=64 N2=64 N3=64 0xffffc20000302000-0xffffc20000304000 8192 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f... phys=7fee8000 ioremap 0xffffc20000304000-0xffffc20000307000 12288 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f... phys=7fee7000 ioremap 0xffffc2000031d000-0xffffc2000031f000 8192 init_vdso_vars+0x112/0x210 0xffffc2000031f000-0xffffc2000032b000 49152 cramfs_uncompress_init+0x2e ... /0x80 pages=11 vmalloc N0=3 N1=3 N2=2 N3=3 0xffffc2000033a000-0xffffc2000033d000 12288 sys_swapon+0x640/0xac0 ... pages=2 vmalloc N1=2 0xffffc20000347000-0xffffc2000034c000 20480 xt_alloc_table_info+0xfe ... /0x130 [x_tables] pages=4 vmalloc N0=4 0xffffffffa0000000-0xffffffffa000f000 61440 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ... pages=14 vmalloc N2=14 0xffffffffa000f000-0xffffffffa0014000 20480 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ... pages=4 vmalloc N1=4 0xffffffffa0014000-0xffffffffa0017000 12288 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ... pages=2 vmalloc N1=2 0xffffffffa0017000-0xffffffffa0022000 45056 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ... pages=10 vmalloc N0=10
Provides counts of softirq handlers serviced since boot time, for each CPU.
> cat /proc/softirqs
CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3
HI: 0 0 0 0
TIMER: 27166 27120 27097 27034
NET_TX: 0 0 0 17
NET_RX: 42 0 0 39
BLOCK: 0 0 107 1121
TASKLET: 0 0 0 290
SCHED: 27035 26983 26971 26746
HRTIMER: 0 0 0 0
RCU: 1678 1769 2178 2250
The subdirectory /proc/ide contains information about all IDE devices of which the kernel is aware. There is one subdirectory for each IDE controller, the file drivers and a link for each IDE device, pointing to the device directory in the controller specific subtree.
The file 'drivers' contains general information about the drivers used for the IDE devices:
> cat /proc/ide/drivers ide-cdrom version 4.53 ide-disk version 1.08
More detailed information can be found in the controller specific subdirectories. These are named ide0, ide1 and so on. Each of these directories contains the files shown in table 1-6.
| File | Content |
|---|---|
| channel | IDE channel (0 or 1) |
| config | Configuration (only for PCI/IDE bridge) |
| mate | Mate name |
| model | Type/Chipset of IDE controller |
Each device connected to a controller has a separate subdirectory in the controllers directory. The files listed in table 1-7 are contained in these directories.
| File | Content |
|---|---|
| cache | The cache |
| capacity | Capacity of the medium (in 512Byte blocks) |
| driver | driver and version |
| geometry | physical and logical geometry |
| identify | device identify block |
| media | media type |
| model | device identifier |
| settings | device setup |
| smart_thresholds | IDE disk management thresholds |
| smart_values | IDE disk management values |
The most interesting file is settings. This file contains a nice
overview of the drive parameters:
# cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings name value min max mode ---- ----- --- --- ---- bios_cyl 526 0 65535 rw bios_head 255 0 255 rw bios_sect 63 0 63 rw breada_readahead 4 0 127 rw bswap 0 0 1 r file_readahead 72 0 2097151 rw io_32bit 0 0 3 rw keepsettings 0 0 1 rw max_kb_per_request 122 1 127 rw multcount 0 0 8 rw nice1 1 0 1 rw nowerr 0 0 1 rw pio_mode write-only 0 255 w slow 0 0 1 rw unmaskirq 0 0 1 rw using_dma 0 0 1 rw
The subdirectory /proc/net follows the usual pattern. Table 1-8 shows the additional values you get for IP version 6 if you configure the kernel to support this. Table 1-9 lists the files and their meaning.
| File | Content |
|---|---|
| udp6 | UDP sockets (IPv6) |
| tcp6 | TCP sockets (IPv6) |
| raw6 | Raw device statistics (IPv6) |
| igmp6 | IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6) |
| if_inet6 | List of IPv6 interface addresses |
| ipv6_route | Kernel routing table for IPv6 |
| rt6_stats | Global IPv6 routing tables statistics |
| sockstat6 | Socket statistics (IPv6) |
| snmp6 | Snmp data (IPv6) |
| File | Content |
|---|---|
| arp | Kernel ARP table |
| dev | network devices with statistics |
| dev_mcast | the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound addresses). |
| dev_stat | network device status |
| ip_fwchains | Firewall chain linkage |
| ip_fwnames | Firewall chain names |
| ip_masq | Directory containing the masquerading tables |
| ip_masquerade | Major masquerading table |
| netstat | Network statistics |
| raw | raw device statistics |
| route | Kernel routing table |
| rpc | Directory containing rpc info |
| rt_cache | Routing cache |
| snmp | SNMP data |
| sockstat | Socket statistics |
| tcp | TCP sockets |
| udp | UDP sockets |
| unix | UNIX domain sockets |
| wireless | Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc) |
| igmp | IP multicast addresses, which this host joined |
| psched | Global packet scheduler parameters. |
| netlink | List of PF_NETLINK sockets |
| ip_mr_vifs | List of multicast virtual interfaces |
| ip_mr_cache | List of multicast routing cache |
You can use this information to see which network devices are available in your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices:
> cat /proc/net/dev
Inter-|Receive |[...
face |bytes packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[...
lo: 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0 [...
ppp0:15475140 20721 410 0 0 410 0 0 [...
eth0: 614530 7085 0 0 0 0 0 1 [...
...] Transmit
...] bytes packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
...] 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0
...] 1375103 17405 0 0 0 0 0 0
...] 1703981 5535 0 0 0 3 0 0
In addition, each Channel Bond interface has its own directory. For example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/. It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how many times the slaves link has failed.
If you have a SCSI host adapter in your system, you'll find a subdirectory named after the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi. You'll also see a list of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi:
>cat /proc/scsi/scsi Attached devices: Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 Vendor: IBM Model: DGHS09U Rev: 03E0 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03 Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00 Vendor: PIONEER Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S Rev: 1.04 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
The directory named after the driver has one file for each adapter found in the system. These files contain information about the controller, including the used IRQ and the IO address range. The amount of information shown is dependent on the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI adapter:
> cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0
Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4
Compile Options:
TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled
AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS : Disabled
AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY : 5
Adapter Configuration:
SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter
Ultra Wide Controller
PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000
Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used.
Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled
IRQ: 10
SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2,
Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255
Interrupts: 160328
BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6
Adapter Control Word: 0x005b
Extended Translation: Enabled
Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff
Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001
Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000
Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000
Default Tag Queue Depth: 8
Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0:
{255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255}
Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0:
{1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
Statistics:
(scsi0:0:0:0)
Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8
Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0)
Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes)
(scsi0:0:6:0)
Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15
Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0)
Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes)
The directory /proc/parport contains information about the parallel ports of your system. It has one subdirectory for each port, named after the port number (0,1,2,...).
These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-10.
| File | Content |
|---|---|
| autoprobe | Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired. |
| devices | list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear against any). |
| hardware | Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel. |
| irq | IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ number or none). |
Information about the available and actually used tty's can be found in the directory /proc/tty. You'll find entries for drivers and line disciplines in this directory, as shown in Table 1-11.
| File | Content |
|---|---|
| drivers | list of drivers and their usage |
| ldiscs | registered line disciplines |
| driver/serial | usage statistic and status of single tty lines |
To see which tty's are currently in use, you can simply look into the file /proc/tty/drivers:
> cat /proc/tty/drivers pty_slave /dev/pts 136 0-255 pty:slave pty_master /dev/ptm 128 0-255 pty:master pty_slave /dev/ttyp 3 0-255 pty:slave pty_master /dev/pty 2 0-255 pty:master serial /dev/cua 5 64-67 serial:callout serial /dev/ttyS 4 64-67 serial /dev/tty0 /dev/tty0 4 0 system:vtmaster /dev/ptmx /dev/ptmx 5 2 system /dev/console /dev/console 5 1 system:console /dev/tty /dev/tty 5 0 system:/dev/tty unknown /dev/tty 4 1-63 console
Various pieces of information about kernel activity are available in the /proc/stat file. All of the numbers reported in this file are aggregates since the system first booted. For a quick look, simply cat the file:
> cat /proc/stat cpu 2255 34 2290 22625563 6290 127 456 0 0 0 cpu0 1132 34 1441 11311718 3675 127 438 0 0 0 cpu1 1123 0 849 11313845 2614 0 18 0 0 0 intr 114930548 113199788 3 0 5 263 0 4 [... lots more numbers ...] ctxt 1990473 btime 1062191376 processes 2915 procs_running 1 procs_blocked 0 softirq 183433 0 21755 12 39 1137 231 21459 2263
The very first "cpu" line aggregates the numbers in all of the other "cpuN" lines. These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing different kinds of work. Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a second). The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
user: normal processes executing in user mode
nice: niced processes executing in user mode
system: processes executing in kernel mode
idle: twiddling thumbs
iowait: In a word, iowait stands for waiting for I/O to complete. But there are several problems:
- CPU will not wait for I/O to complete, iowait is the time that a task is waiting for I/O to complete. When CPU goes into idle state for outstanding task I/O, another task will be scheduled on this CPU.
- In a multi-core CPU, the task waiting for I/O to complete is not running on any CPU, so the iowait of each CPU is difficult to calculate.
- The value of iowait field in /proc/stat will decrease in certain conditions.
So, the iowait is not reliable by reading from /proc/stat.
irq: servicing interrupts
softirq: servicing softirqs
steal: involuntary wait
guest: running a normal guest
guest_nice: running a niced guest
The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts serviced since boot time, for each of the possible system interrupts. The first column is the total of all interrupts serviced including unnumbered architecture specific interrupts; each subsequent column is the total for that particular numbered interrupt. Unnumbered interrupts are not shown, only summed into the total.
The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.
The "btime" line gives the time at which the system booted, in seconds since the Unix epoch.
The "processes" line gives the number of processes and threads created, which includes (but is not limited to) those created by calls to the fork() and clone() system calls.
The "procs_running" line gives the total number of threads that are running or ready to run (i.e., the total number of runnable threads).
The "procs_blocked" line gives the number of processes currently blocked, waiting for I/O to complete.
The "softirq" line gives counts of softirqs serviced since boot time, for each of the possible system softirqs. The first column is the total of all softirqs serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular softirq.
Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in /proc/fs/ext4. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in /proc/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /proc/fs/ext4/hdc or /proc/fs/ext4/dm-0). The files in each per-device directory are shown in Table 1-12, below.
| File | Content |
| mb_groups | details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks |
Shows registered system console lines.
To see which character device lines are currently used for the system console /dev/console, you may simply look into the file /proc/consoles:
> cat /proc/consoles tty0 -WU (ECp) 4:7 ttyS0 -W- (Ep) 4:64
The columns are:
| device | name of the device |
|---|---|
| operations |
|
| flags |
|
| major:minor | major and minor number of the device separated by a colon |
The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status by reading files in the hierarchy.
The directory structure of /proc reflects the types of information and makes it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data.
- Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys
- Exploring the files which modify certain parameters
- Review of the /proc/sys file tree
A very interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only a source of information, it also allows you to change parameters within the kernel. Be very careful when attempting this. You can optimize your system, but you can also cause it to crash. Never alter kernel parameters on a production system. Set up a development machine and test to make sure that everything works the way you want it to. You may have no alternative but to reboot the machine once an error has been made.
To change a value, simply echo the new value into the file. You need to be root to do this. You can create your own boot script to perform this every time your system boots.
The files in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and general things in the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files can inadvertently disrupt your system, it is advisable to read both documentation and source before actually making adjustments. In any case, be very careful when writing to any of these files. The entries in /proc may change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt review the kernel documentation in the directory /usr/src/linux/Documentation. This chapter is heavily based on the documentation included in the pre 2.2 kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel.
Please see: Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/ directory for descriptions of these entries.
Certain aspects of kernel behavior can be modified at runtime, without the need to recompile the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the /proc/sys tree can not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings of the kernel.
These files can be used to adjust the badness heuristic used to select which process gets killed in out of memory (oom) conditions.
The badness heuristic assigns a value to each candidate task ranging from 0 (never kill) to 1000 (always kill) to determine which process is targeted. The units are roughly a proportion along that range of allowed memory the process may allocate from based on an estimation of its current memory and swap use. For example, if a task is using all allowed memory, its badness score will be 1000. If it is using half of its allowed memory, its score will be 500.
The amount of "allowed" memory depends on the context in which the oom killer was called. If it is due to the memory assigned to the allocating task's cpuset being exhausted, the allowed memory represents the set of mems assigned to that cpuset. If it is due to a mempolicy's node(s) being exhausted, the allowed memory represents the set of mempolicy nodes. If it is due to a memory limit (or swap limit) being reached, the allowed memory is that configured limit. Finally, if it is due to the entire system being out of memory, the allowed memory represents all allocatable resources.
The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj is added to the badness score before it is used to determine which task to kill. Acceptable values range from -1000 (OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MIN) to +1000 (OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MAX). This allows userspace to polarize the preference for oom killing either by always preferring a certain task or completely disabling it. The lowest possible value, -1000, is equivalent to disabling oom killing entirely for that task since it will always report a badness score of 0.
Consequently, it is very simple for userspace to define the amount of memory to consider for each task. Setting a /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj value of +500, for example, is roughly equivalent to allowing the remainder of tasks sharing the same system, cpuset, mempolicy, or memory controller resources to use at least 50% more memory. A value of -500, on the other hand, would be roughly equivalent to discounting 50% of the task's allowed memory from being considered as scoring against the task.
For backwards compatibility with previous kernels, /proc/<pid>/oom_adj may also be used to tune the badness score. Its acceptable values range from -16 (OOM_ADJUST_MIN) to +15 (OOM_ADJUST_MAX) and a special value of -17 (OOM_DISABLE) to disable oom killing entirely for that task. Its value is scaled linearly with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj.
The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj may be reduced no lower than the last value set by a CAP_SYS_RESOURCE process. To reduce the value any lower requires CAP_SYS_RESOURCE.
This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer for any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj to tune which process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.
Please note that the exported value includes oom_score_adj so it is effectively in range [0,2000].
This file contains IO statistics for each running process.
test:/tmp # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.dat & [1] 3828 test:/tmp # cat /proc/3828/io rchar: 323934931 wchar: 323929600 syscr: 632687 syscw: 632675 read_bytes: 0 write_bytes: 323932160 cancelled_write_bytes: 0
I/O counter: chars read The number of bytes which this task has caused to be read from storage. This is simply the sum of bytes which this process passed to read() and pread(). It includes things like tty IO and it is unaffected by whether or not actual physical disk IO was required (the read might have been satisfied from pagecache).
I/O counter: chars written The number of bytes which this task has caused, or shall cause to be written to disk. Similar caveats apply here as with rchar.
I/O counter: read syscalls Attempt to count the number of read I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like read() and pread().
I/O counter: write syscalls Attempt to count the number of write I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like write() and pwrite().
I/O counter: bytes read Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process really did cause to be fetched from the storage layer. Done at the submit_bio() level, so it is accurate for block-backed filesystems. <please add status regarding NFS and CIFS at a later time>
I/O counter: bytes written Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process caused to be sent to the storage layer. This is done at page-dirtying time.
The big inaccuracy here is truncate. If a process writes 1MB to a file and then deletes the file, it will in fact perform no writeout. But it will have been accounted as having caused 1MB of write. In other words: The number of bytes which this process caused to not happen, by truncating pagecache. A task can cause "negative" IO too. If this task truncates some dirty pagecache, some IO which another task has been accounted for (in its write_bytes) will not be happening. We _could_ just subtract that from the truncating task's write_bytes, but there is information loss in doing that.
Note
At its current implementation state, this is a bit racy on 32-bit machines: if process A reads process B's /proc/pid/io while process B is updating one of those 64-bit counters, process A could see an intermediate result.
More information about this can be found within the taskstats documentation in Documentation/accounting.
When a process is dumped, all anonymous memory is written to a core file as long as the size of the core file isn't limited. But sometimes we don't want to dump some memory segments, for example, huge shared memory or DAX. Conversely, sometimes we want to save file-backed memory segments into a core file, not only the individual files.
/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter allows you to customize which memory segments will be dumped when the <pid> process is dumped. coredump_filter is a bitmask of memory types. If a bit of the bitmask is set, memory segments of the corresponding memory type are dumped, otherwise they are not dumped.
The following 9 memory types are supported:
- (bit 0) anonymous private memory
- (bit 1) anonymous shared memory
- (bit 2) file-backed private memory
- (bit 3) file-backed shared memory
- (bit 4) ELF header pages in file-backed private memory areas (it is effective only if the bit 2 is cleared)
- (bit 5) hugetlb private memory
- (bit 6) hugetlb shared memory
- (bit 7) DAX private memory
- (bit 8) DAX shared memory
Note that MMIO pages such as frame buffer are never dumped and vDSO pages are always dumped regardless of the bitmask status.
Note that bits 0-4 don't affect hugetlb or DAX memory. hugetlb memory is only affected by bit 5-6, and DAX is only affected by bits 7-8.
The default value of coredump_filter is 0x33; this means all anonymous memory segments, ELF header pages and hugetlb private memory are dumped.
If you don't want to dump all shared memory segments attached to pid 1234, write 0x31 to the process's proc file:
$ echo 0x31 > /proc/1234/coredump_filter
When a new process is created, the process inherits the bitmask status from its parent. It is useful to set up coredump_filter before the program runs. For example:
$ echo 0x7 > /proc/self/coredump_filter $ ./some_program
This file contains lines of the form:
36 35 98:0 /mnt1 /mnt2 rw,noatime master:1 - ext3 /dev/root rw,errors=continue (1)(2)(3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (1) mount ID: unique identifier of the mount (may be reused after umount) (2) parent ID: ID of parent (or of self for the top of the mount tree) (3) major:minor: value of st_dev for files on filesystem (4) root: root of the mount within the filesystem (5) mount point: mount point relative to the process's root (6) mount options: per mount options (7) optional fields: zero or more fields of the form "tag[:value]" (8) separator: marks the end of the optional fields (9) filesystem type: name of filesystem of the form "type[.subtype]" (10) mount source: filesystem specific information or "none" (11) super options: per super block options
Parsers should ignore all unrecognised optional fields. Currently the possible optional fields are:
| shared:X | mount is shared in peer group X |
| master:X | mount is slave to peer group X |
| propagate_from:X | mount is slave and receives propagation from peer group X [1] |
| unbindable | mount is unbindable |
| [1] | X is the closest dominant peer group under the process's root. If X is the immediate master of the mount, or if there's no dominant peer group under the same root, then only the "master:X" field is present and not the "propagate_from:X" field. |
For more information on mount propagation see:
Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.rst
These files provide a method to access a task's comm value. It also allows for a task to set its own or one of its thread siblings comm value. The comm value is limited in size compared to the cmdline value, so writing anything longer then the kernel's TASK_COMM_LEN (currently 16 chars) will result in a truncated comm value.
This file provides a fast way to retrieve first level children pids of a task pointed by <pid>/<tid> pair. The format is a space separated stream of pids.
Note the "first level" here -- if a child has its own children they will not be listed here; one needs to read /proc/<children-pid>/task/<tid>/children to obtain the descendants.
Since this interface is intended to be fast and cheap it doesn't guarantee to provide precise results and some children might be skipped, especially if they've exited right after we printed their pids, so one needs to either stop or freeze processes being inspected if precise results are needed.
This file provides information associated with an opened file. The regular files have at least three fields -- 'pos', 'flags' and 'mnt_id'. The 'pos' represents the current offset of the opened file in decimal form [see lseek(2) for details], 'flags' denotes the octal O_xxx mask the file has been created with [see open(2) for details] and 'mnt_id' represents mount ID of the file system containing the opened file [see 3.5 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo for details].
A typical output is:
pos: 0 flags: 0100002 mnt_id: 19
All locks associated with a file descriptor are shown in its fdinfo too:
lock: 1: FLOCK ADVISORY WRITE 359 00:13:11691 0 EOF
The files such as eventfd, fsnotify, signalfd, epoll among the regular pos/flags pair provide additional information particular to the objects they represent.
pos: 0 flags: 04002 mnt_id: 9 eventfd-count: 5a
where 'eventfd-count' is hex value of a counter.
pos: 0 flags: 04002 mnt_id: 9 sigmask: 0000000000000200
where 'sigmask' is hex value of the signal mask associated with a file.
pos: 0 flags: 02 mnt_id: 9 tfd: 5 events: 1d data: ffffffffffffffff pos:0 ino:61af sdev:7
where 'tfd' is a target file descriptor number in decimal form, 'events' is events mask being watched and the 'data' is data associated with a target [see epoll(7) for more details].
The 'pos' is current offset of the target file in decimal form [see lseek(2)], 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device numbers where target file resides, all in hex format.
For inotify files the format is the following:
pos: 0 flags: 02000000 inotify wd:3 ino:9e7e sdev:800013 mask:800afce ignored_mask:0 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:7e9e0000640d1b6d
where 'wd' is a watch descriptor in decimal form, i.e. a target file descriptor number, 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device where the target file resides and the 'mask' is the mask of events, all in hex form [see inotify(7) for more details].
If the kernel was built with exportfs support, the path to the target file is encoded as a file handle. The file handle is provided by three fields 'fhandle-bytes', 'fhandle-type' and 'f_handle', all in hex format.
If the kernel is built without exportfs support the file handle won't be printed out.
If there is no inotify mark attached yet the 'inotify' line will be omitted.
For fanotify files the format is:
pos: 0 flags: 02 mnt_id: 9 fanotify flags:10 event-flags:0 fanotify mnt_id:12 mflags:40 mask:38 ignored_mask:40000003 fanotify ino:4f969 sdev:800013 mflags:0 mask:3b ignored_mask:40000000 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:69f90400c275b5b4
where fanotify 'flags' and 'event-flags' are values used in fanotify_init call, 'mnt_id' is the mount point identifier, 'mflags' is the value of flags associated with mark which are tracked separately from events mask. 'ino' and 'sdev' are target inode and device, 'mask' is the events mask and 'ignored_mask' is the mask of events which are to be ignored. All are in hex format. Incorporation of 'mflags', 'mask' and 'ignored_mask' provide information about flags and mask used in fanotify_mark call [see fsnotify manpage for details].
While the first three lines are mandatory and always printed, the rest is optional and may be omitted if no marks created yet.
pos: 0 flags: 02 mnt_id: 9 clockid: 0 ticks: 0 settime flags: 01 it_value: (0, 49406829) it_interval: (1, 0)
where 'clockid' is the clock type and 'ticks' is the number of the timer expirations that have occurred [see timerfd_create(2) for details]. 'settime flags' are flags in octal form been used to setup the timer [see timerfd_settime(2) for details]. 'it_value' is remaining time until the timer expiration. 'it_interval' is the interval for the timer. Note the timer might be set up with TIMER_ABSTIME option which will be shown in 'settime flags', but 'it_value' still exhibits timer's remaining time.
This directory contains symbolic links which represent memory mapped files the process is maintaining. Example output:
| lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c600000-333c620000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c81f000-333c820000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c820000-333c821000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so | ... | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 35d0421000-35d0422000 -> /usr/lib64/libselinux.so.1 | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 400000-41a000 -> /usr/bin/ls
The name of a link represents the virtual memory bounds of a mapping, i.e. vm_area_struct::vm_start-vm_area_struct::vm_end.
The main purpose of the map_files is to retrieve a set of memory mapped files in a fast way instead of parsing /proc/<pid>/maps or /proc/<pid>/smaps, both of which contain many more records. At the same time one can open(2) mappings from the listings of two processes and comparing their inode numbers to figure out which anonymous memory areas are actually shared.
This file provides the value of the task's timerslack value in nanoseconds. This value specifies an amount of time that normal timers may be deferred in order to coalesce timers and avoid unnecessary wakeups.
This allows a task's interactivity vs power consumption tradeoff to be adjusted.
Writing 0 to the file will set the task's timerslack to the default value.
Valid values are from 0 - ULLONG_MAX
An application setting the value must have PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_FSCREDS level permissions on the task specified to change its timerslack_ns value.
When CONFIG_LIVEPATCH is enabled, this file displays the value of the patch state for the task.
A value of '-1' indicates that no patch is in transition.
A value of '0' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is unpatched. If the patch is being enabled, then the task hasn't been patched yet. If the patch is being disabled, then the task has already been unpatched.
A value of '1' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is patched. If the patch is being enabled, then the task has already been patched. If the patch is being disabled, then the task hasn't been unpatched yet.
When CONFIG_PROC_PID_ARCH_STATUS is enabled, this file displays the architecture specific status of the task.
$ cat /proc/6753/arch_status AVX512_elapsed_ms: 8
If AVX512 is supported on the machine, this entry shows the milliseconds elapsed since the last time AVX512 usage was recorded. The recording happens on a best effort basis when a task is scheduled out. This means that the value depends on two factors:
- The time which the task spent on the CPU without being scheduled out. With CPU isolation and a single runnable task this can take several seconds.
- The time since the task was scheduled out last. Depending on the reason for being scheduled out (time slice exhausted, syscall ...) this can be arbitrary long time.
As a consequence the value cannot be considered precise and authoritative information. The application which uses this information has to be aware of the overall scenario on the system in order to determine whether a task is a real AVX512 user or not. Precise information can be obtained with performance counters.
A special value of '-1' indicates that no AVX512 usage was recorded, thus the task is unlikely an AVX512 user, but depends on the workload and the scheduling scenario, it also could be a false negative mentioned above.
The following mount options are supported:
hidepid= Set /proc/<pid>/ access mode. gid= Set the group authorized to learn processes information. subset= Show only the specified subset of procfs.
hidepid=off or hidepid=0 means classic mode - everybody may access all /proc/<pid>/ directories (default).
hidepid=noaccess or hidepid=1 means users may not access any /proc/<pid>/ directories but their own. Sensitive files like cmdline, sched*, status are now protected against other users. This makes it impossible to learn whether any user runs specific program (given the program doesn't reveal itself by its behaviour). As an additional bonus, as /proc/<pid>/cmdline is unaccessible for other users, poorly written programs passing sensitive information via program arguments are now protected against local eavesdroppers.
hidepid=invisible or hidepid=2 means hidepid=1 plus all /proc/<pid>/ will be fully invisible to other users. It doesn't mean that it hides a fact whether a process with a specific pid value exists (it can be learned by other means, e.g. by "kill -0 $PID"), but it hides process' uid and gid, which may be learned by stat()'ing /proc/<pid>/ otherwise. It greatly complicates an intruder's task of gathering information about running processes, whether some daemon runs with elevated privileges, whether other user runs some sensitive program, whether other users run any program at all, etc.
hidepid=ptraceable or hidepid=4 means that procfs should only contain /proc/<pid>/ directories that the caller can ptrace.
gid= defines a group authorized to learn processes information otherwise prohibited by hidepid=. If you use some daemon like identd which needs to learn information about processes information, just add identd to this group.
subset=pid hides all top level files and directories in the procfs that are not related to tasks.
Originally, before the advent of pid namepsace, procfs was a global file system. It means that there was only one procfs instance in the system.
When pid namespace was added, a separate procfs instance was mounted in each pid namespace. So, procfs mount options are global among all mountpoints within the same namespace:
# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
# strace -e mount mount -o hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
mount("proc", "/tmp/proc", "proc", 0, "hidepid=1") = 0
+++ exited with 0 +++
# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
and only after remounting procfs mount options will change at all mountpoints:
# mount -o remount,hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc # grep ^proc /proc/mounts proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0 proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
This behavior is different from the behavior of other filesystems.
The new procfs behavior is more like other filesystems. Each procfs mount creates a new procfs instance. Mount options affect own procfs instance. It means that it became possible to have several procfs instances displaying tasks with different filtering options in one pid namespace:
# mount -o hidepid=invisible -t proc proc /proc # mount -o hidepid=noaccess -t proc proc /tmp/proc # grep ^proc /proc/mounts proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=invisible 0 0 proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=noaccess 0 0