Procfs - ArchWiki

# Procfs

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## Description

Procfs is pseudo filesystem (/proc) containing information about the system resources, including currently running processes, kernel, hardware. Since procfs is pseudo(meaning false) filesystem that means it is not really existent(only exist in memory). Altering files in /proc allows us to manipulate kernel in runtime. If we take a look at the sizes of files inside procfs we can notice that their size is 0, reason for that is they are only populated when requested by user(on the fly). It is suggested to use sysfs over procfs because it has defined structure and procfs became a mess over time.

## Content

### Kernel & system information

There are many files under the /proc which tells us a lot of information about the system as well as the kernel. There are a lot of them to talk about every single one of them, but some of them are listed below with brief information what they are.

- /proc/cpuinfo - informations about CPU
- /proc/meminfo - information about the physical memory
- /proc/vmstats - information about the virtual memory
- /proc/mounts - information about the mounts(mount)
- /proc/filesystems - information about active filesystems
- /proc/uptime - current system uptime
- /proc/cmdline - kernel command line

### Processes

Inside /proc/<pid> is stored information about every process currently running. Below is example showing some of the PIDs currently running

    $ ls -l /proc

    total 0
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 root    root                  0 Sep  8 18:17 1
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 root    root                  0 Sep  9 03:02 10
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 daemonx daemonx               0 Sep  9 03:02 1057
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 daemonx daemonx               0 Sep  8 18:18 1077
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 daemonx daemonx               0 Sep  9 03:02 1087
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 root    root                  0 Sep  9 03:02 11
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 daemonx daemonx               0 Sep  9 03:02 1103
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 daemonx daemonx               0 Sep  9 03:02 1107
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 daemonx daemonx               0 Sep  9 03:02 1159
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 root    root                  0 Sep  9 03:02 12
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 root    root                  0 Sep  9 03:02 124
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 root    root                  0 Sep  9 03:02 125
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 root    root                  0 Sep  9 03:02 127
    dr-xr-xr-x  9 root    root                  0 Sep  9 03:02 128
    ...

Lets take for example pid 1057 and see what's inside

    $ ls -l /proc/1057

    total 0
    dr-xr-xr-x 2 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 attr
    -rw-r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 autogroup
    -r-------- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 auxv
    -r--r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 cgroup
    --w------- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 clear_refs
    -r--r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 cmdline
    -rw-r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 comm
    -rw-r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 coredump_filter
    -r--r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 cpuset
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 cwd -> /home/daemonx
    -r-------- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 environ
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 exe -> /usr/lib/gvfsd-metadata
    dr-x------ 2 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 fd
    dr-x------ 2 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 fdinfo
    -rw-r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 gid_map
    -r-------- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 io
    -r--r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 latency
    -r--r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 limits
    -rw-r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 loginuid
    dr-x------ 2 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 map_files
    -r--r--r-- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 maps
    -rw------- 1 daemonx daemonx 0 Sep  9 03:12 mem
    ...

Some of the fields:

- cmdline - arguments used to start program
- cwd - current working directory for the process
- environ - environment variables inside the process
- fd/ - directory containing open file descriptors for the process
- exe - symbolic link to process executable
- maps - memory mapping of the process
- mem - virtual memory of the process

## Usage

To read from proc file, we can use cat: `$ cat /proc/cmdline`. To write to the file, we can use echo: `echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq` (as the root user)

Categories:

- System administration
- Pseudo filesystems