Hi All,
Can anyone tell me what the dir /proc/ is , it has some interesting files but what are they for ?



Dave T.

You get Answers by Asking Questions.... Am I right ?

/proc is a virtual file system that the linux kernel uses to provide system information and settings about running PROCesses.

You can think of /proc as a window into the running kernel. The files that appear in it do not exist on a disk somewhere but are simply places to get information about what's going on.

The directories under /proc whose names are numbers are actually process id's. They contain information about all of the user processes that are running at any given time.

There are many other files and directories with different sorts of information. For example :

/proc/version : version information on running kernel
/proc/modules : modules loaded into the running kernel

etc...etc...

Often there exist commands which access the /proc filesystem and format the data it contains in a way which is easier to understand. For example many distributions have the lsmod command which displays the information in /proc/modules.

There are also some files which can be used by root to modify kernel parameters. These are generally under /proc/sys.

Try Googling for linux proc filesystem for more detailed information.

Tim

It is a pseudo files system ('pseudo' - since it has no "hard" representation on any media) which can be seen as "interface" to the kernel state and settings. The linux sources (usually in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ contain the file proc.txt in subdirectory filesystems. Over there you'll find a lot of info.

Thank you for your help .. I need to do more reading up :-)

Dave T.