1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
2
3====================
4The /proc Filesystem
5====================
6
7=====================  =======================================  ================
8/proc/sys              Terrehon Bowden <terrehon@pacbell.net>,  October 7 1999
9                       Bodo Bauer <bb@ricochet.net>
102.4.x update	       Jorge Nerin <comandante@zaralinux.com>   November 14 2000
11move /proc/sys	       Shen Feng <shen@cn.fujitsu.com>	        April 1 2009
12fixes/update part 1.1  Stefani Seibold <stefani@seibold.net>    June 9 2009
13=====================  =======================================  ================
14
15
16
17.. Table of Contents
18
19  0     Preface
20  0.1	Introduction/Credits
21  0.2	Legal Stuff
22
23  1	Collecting System Information
24  1.1	Process-Specific Subdirectories
25  1.2	Kernel data
26  1.3	IDE devices in /proc/ide
27  1.4	Networking info in /proc/net
28  1.5	SCSI info
29  1.6	Parallel port info in /proc/parport
30  1.7	TTY info in /proc/tty
31  1.8	Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
32  1.9	Ext4 file system parameters
33
34  2	Modifying System Parameters
35
36  3	Per-Process Parameters
37  3.1	/proc/<pid>/oom_adj & /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj - Adjust the oom-killer
38								score
39  3.2	/proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
40  3.3	/proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
41  3.4	/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
42  3.5	/proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
43  3.6	/proc/<pid>/comm  & /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/comm
44  3.7   /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/children - Information about task children
45  3.8   /proc/<pid>/fdinfo/<fd> - Information about opened file
46  3.9   /proc/<pid>/map_files - Information about memory mapped files
47  3.10  /proc/<pid>/timerslack_ns - Task timerslack value
48  3.11	/proc/<pid>/patch_state - Livepatch patch operation state
49  3.12	/proc/<pid>/arch_status - Task architecture specific information
50
51  4	Configuring procfs
52  4.1	Mount options
53
54  5	Filesystem behavior
55
56Preface
57=======
58
590.1 Introduction/Credits
60------------------------
61
62This documentation is  part of a soon (or  so we hope) to be  released book on
63the SuSE  Linux distribution. As  there is  no complete documentation  for the
64/proc file system and we've used  many freely available sources to write these
65chapters, it  seems only fair  to give the work  back to the  Linux community.
66This work is  based on the 2.2.*  kernel version and the  upcoming 2.4.*. I'm
67afraid it's still far from complete, but we  hope it will be useful. As far as
68we know, it is the first 'all-in-one' document about the /proc file system. It
69is focused  on the Intel  x86 hardware,  so if you  are looking for  PPC, ARM,
70SPARC, AXP, etc., features, you probably  won't find what you are looking for.
71It also only covers IPv4 networking, not IPv6 nor other protocols - sorry. But
72additions and patches  are welcome and will  be added to this  document if you
73mail them to Bodo.
74
75We'd like  to  thank Alan Cox, Rik van Riel, and Alexey Kuznetsov and a lot of
76other people for help compiling this documentation. We'd also like to extend a
77special thank  you to Andi Kleen for documentation, which we relied on heavily
78to create  this  document,  as well as the additional information he provided.
79Thanks to  everybody  else  who contributed source or docs to the Linux kernel
80and helped create a great piece of software... :)
81
82If you  have  any comments, corrections or additions, please don't hesitate to
83contact Bodo  Bauer  at  bb@ricochet.net.  We'll  be happy to add them to this
84document.
85
86The   latest   version    of   this   document   is    available   online   at
87http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/proc.html
88
89If  the above  direction does  not works  for you,  you could  try the  kernel
90mailing  list  at  linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org  and/or try  to  reach  me  at
91comandante@zaralinux.com.
92
930.2 Legal Stuff
94---------------
95
96We don't  guarantee  the  correctness  of this document, and if you come to us
97complaining about  how  you  screwed  up  your  system  because  of  incorrect
98documentation, we won't feel responsible...
99
100Chapter 1: Collecting System Information
101========================================
102
103In This Chapter
104---------------
105* Investigating  the  properties  of  the  pseudo  file  system  /proc and its
106  ability to provide information on the running Linux system
107* Examining /proc's structure
108* Uncovering  various  information  about the kernel and the processes running
109  on the system
110
111------------------------------------------------------------------------------
112
113The proc  file  system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the
114kernel. It  can  be  used to obtain information about the system and to change
115certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).
116
117First, we'll  take  a  look  at the read-only parts of /proc. In Chapter 2, we
118show you how you can use /proc/sys to change settings.
119
1201.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
121-----------------------------------
122
123The directory  /proc  contains  (among other things) one subdirectory for each
124process running on the system, which is named after the process ID (PID).
125
126The link  'self'  points to  the process reading the file system. Each process
127subdirectory has the entries listed in Table 1-1.
128
129Note that an open file descriptor to /proc/<pid> or to any of its
130contained files or subdirectories does not prevent <pid> being reused
131for some other process in the event that <pid> exits. Operations on
132open /proc/<pid> file descriptors corresponding to dead processes
133never act on any new process that the kernel may, through chance, have
134also assigned the process ID <pid>. Instead, operations on these FDs
135usually fail with ESRCH.
136
137.. table:: Table 1-1: Process specific entries in /proc
138
139 =============  ===============================================================
140 File		Content
141 =============  ===============================================================
142 clear_refs	Clears page referenced bits shown in smaps output
143 cmdline	Command line arguments
144 cpu		Current and last cpu in which it was executed	(2.4)(smp)
145 cwd		Link to the current working directory
146 environ	Values of environment variables
147 exe		Link to the executable of this process
148 fd		Directory, which contains all file descriptors
149 maps		Memory maps to executables and library files	(2.4)
150 mem		Memory held by this process
151 root		Link to the root directory of this process
152 stat		Process status
153 statm		Process memory status information
154 status		Process status in human readable form
155 wchan		Present with CONFIG_KALLSYMS=y: it shows the kernel function
156		symbol the task is blocked in - or "0" if not blocked.
157 pagemap	Page table
158 stack		Report full stack trace, enable via CONFIG_STACKTRACE
159 smaps		An extension based on maps, showing the memory consumption of
160		each mapping and flags associated with it
161 smaps_rollup	Accumulated smaps stats for all mappings of the process.  This
162		can be derived from smaps, but is faster and more convenient
163 numa_maps	An extension based on maps, showing the memory locality and
164		binding policy as well as mem usage (in pages) of each mapping.
165 =============  ===============================================================
166
167For example, to get the status information of a process, all you have to do is
168read the file /proc/PID/status::
169
170  >cat /proc/self/status
171  Name:   cat
172  State:  R (running)
173  Tgid:   5452
174  Pid:    5452
175  PPid:   743
176  TracerPid:      0						(2.4)
177  Uid:    501     501     501     501
178  Gid:    100     100     100     100
179  FDSize: 256
180  Groups: 100 14 16
181  VmPeak:     5004 kB
182  VmSize:     5004 kB
183  VmLck:         0 kB
184  VmHWM:       476 kB
185  VmRSS:       476 kB
186  RssAnon:             352 kB
187  RssFile:             120 kB
188  RssShmem:              4 kB
189  VmData:      156 kB
190  VmStk:        88 kB
191  VmExe:        68 kB
192  VmLib:      1412 kB
193  VmPTE:        20 kb
194  VmSwap:        0 kB
195  HugetlbPages:          0 kB
196  CoreDumping:    0
197  THP_enabled:	  1
198  Threads:        1
199  SigQ:   0/28578
200  SigPnd: 0000000000000000
201  ShdPnd: 0000000000000000
202  SigBlk: 0000000000000000
203  SigIgn: 0000000000000000
204  SigCgt: 0000000000000000
205  CapInh: 00000000fffffeff
206  CapPrm: 0000000000000000
207  CapEff: 0000000000000000
208  CapBnd: ffffffffffffffff
209  CapAmb: 0000000000000000
210  NoNewPrivs:     0
211  Seccomp:        0
212  Speculation_Store_Bypass:       thread vulnerable
213  SpeculationIndirectBranch:      conditional enabled
214  voluntary_ctxt_switches:        0
215  nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches:     1
216
217This shows you nearly the same information you would get if you viewed it with
218the ps  command.  In  fact,  ps  uses  the  proc  file  system  to  obtain its
219information.  But you get a more detailed  view of the  process by reading the
220file /proc/PID/status. It fields are described in table 1-2.
221
222The  statm  file  contains  more  detailed  information about the process
223memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-3.  The stat file
224contains detailed information about the process itself.  Its fields are
225explained in Table 1-4.
226
227(for SMP CONFIG users)
228
229For making accounting scalable, RSS related information are handled in an
230asynchronous manner and the value may not be very precise. To see a precise
231snapshot of a moment, you can see /proc/<pid>/smaps file and scan page table.
232It's slow but very precise.
233
234.. table:: Table 1-2: Contents of the status files (as of 4.19)
235
236 ==========================  ===================================================
237 Field                       Content
238 ==========================  ===================================================
239 Name                        filename of the executable
240 Umask                       file mode creation mask
241 State                       state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping
242                             in an uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie,
243			     T is traced or stopped)
244 Tgid                        thread group ID
245 Ngid                        NUMA group ID (0 if none)
246 Pid                         process id
247 PPid                        process id of the parent process
248 TracerPid                   PID of process tracing this process (0 if not)
249 Uid                         Real, effective, saved set, and  file system UIDs
250 Gid                         Real, effective, saved set, and  file system GIDs
251 FDSize                      number of file descriptor slots currently allocated
252 Groups                      supplementary group list
253 NStgid                      descendant namespace thread group ID hierarchy
254 NSpid                       descendant namespace process ID hierarchy
255 NSpgid                      descendant namespace process group ID hierarchy
256 NSsid                       descendant namespace session ID hierarchy
257 VmPeak                      peak virtual memory size
258 VmSize                      total program size
259 VmLck                       locked memory size
260 VmPin                       pinned memory size
261 VmHWM                       peak resident set size ("high water mark")
262 VmRSS                       size of memory portions. It contains the three
263                             following parts
264                             (VmRSS = RssAnon + RssFile + RssShmem)
265 RssAnon                     size of resident anonymous memory
266 RssFile                     size of resident file mappings
267 RssShmem                    size of resident shmem memory (includes SysV shm,
268                             mapping of tmpfs and shared anonymous mappings)
269 VmData                      size of private data segments
270 VmStk                       size of stack segments
271 VmExe                       size of text segment
272 VmLib                       size of shared library code
273 VmPTE                       size of page table entries
274 VmSwap                      amount of swap used by anonymous private data
275                             (shmem swap usage is not included)
276 HugetlbPages                size of hugetlb memory portions
277 CoreDumping                 process's memory is currently being dumped
278                             (killing the process may lead to a corrupted core)
279 THP_enabled		     process is allowed to use THP (returns 0 when
280			     PR_SET_THP_DISABLE is set on the process
281 Threads                     number of threads
282 SigQ                        number of signals queued/max. number for queue
283 SigPnd                      bitmap of pending signals for the thread
284 ShdPnd                      bitmap of shared pending signals for the process
285 SigBlk                      bitmap of blocked signals
286 SigIgn                      bitmap of ignored signals
287 SigCgt                      bitmap of caught signals
288 CapInh                      bitmap of inheritable capabilities
289 CapPrm                      bitmap of permitted capabilities
290 CapEff                      bitmap of effective capabilities
291 CapBnd                      bitmap of capabilities bounding set
292 CapAmb                      bitmap of ambient capabilities
293 NoNewPrivs                  no_new_privs, like prctl(PR_GET_NO_NEW_PRIV, ...)
294 Seccomp                     seccomp mode, like prctl(PR_GET_SECCOMP, ...)
295 Speculation_Store_Bypass    speculative store bypass mitigation status
296 SpeculationIndirectBranch   indirect branch speculation mode
297 Cpus_allowed                mask of CPUs on which this process may run
298 Cpus_allowed_list           Same as previous, but in "list format"
299 Mems_allowed                mask of memory nodes allowed to this process
300 Mems_allowed_list           Same as previous, but in "list format"
301 voluntary_ctxt_switches     number of voluntary context switches
302 nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches  number of non voluntary context switches
303 ==========================  ===================================================
304
305
306.. table:: Table 1-3: Contents of the statm files (as of 2.6.8-rc3)
307
308 ======== ===============================	==============================
309 Field    Content
310 ======== ===============================	==============================
311 size     total program size (pages)		(same as VmSize in status)
312 resident size of memory portions (pages)	(same as VmRSS in status)
313 shared   number of pages that are shared	(i.e. backed by a file, same
314						as RssFile+RssShmem in status)
315 trs      number of pages that are 'code'	(not including libs; broken,
316						includes data segment)
317 lrs      number of pages of library		(always 0 on 2.6)
318 drs      number of pages of data/stack		(including libs; broken,
319						includes library text)
320 dt       number of dirty pages			(always 0 on 2.6)
321 ======== ===============================	==============================
322
323
324.. table:: Table 1-4: Contents of the stat files (as of 2.6.30-rc7)
325
326  ============= ===============================================================
327  Field         Content
328  ============= ===============================================================
329  pid           process id
330  tcomm         filename of the executable
331  state         state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an
332                uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped)
333  ppid          process id of the parent process
334  pgrp          pgrp of the process
335  sid           session id
336  tty_nr        tty the process uses
337  tty_pgrp      pgrp of the tty
338  flags         task flags
339  min_flt       number of minor faults
340  cmin_flt      number of minor faults with child's
341  maj_flt       number of major faults
342  cmaj_flt      number of major faults with child's
343  utime         user mode jiffies
344  stime         kernel mode jiffies
345  cutime        user mode jiffies with child's
346  cstime        kernel mode jiffies with child's
347  priority      priority level
348  nice          nice level
349  num_threads   number of threads
350  it_real_value	(obsolete, always 0)
351  start_time    time the process started after system boot
352  vsize         virtual memory size
353  rss           resident set memory size
354  rsslim        current limit in bytes on the rss
355  start_code    address above which program text can run
356  end_code      address below which program text can run
357  start_stack   address of the start of the main process stack
358  esp           current value of ESP
359  eip           current value of EIP
360  pending       bitmap of pending signals
361  blocked       bitmap of blocked signals
362  sigign        bitmap of ignored signals
363  sigcatch      bitmap of caught signals
364  0		(place holder, used to be the wchan address,
365		use /proc/PID/wchan instead)
366  0             (place holder)
367  0             (place holder)
368  exit_signal   signal to send to parent thread on exit
369  task_cpu      which CPU the task is scheduled on
370  rt_priority   realtime priority
371  policy        scheduling policy (man sched_setscheduler)
372  blkio_ticks   time spent waiting for block IO
373  gtime         guest time of the task in jiffies
374  cgtime        guest time of the task children in jiffies
375  start_data    address above which program data+bss is placed
376  end_data      address below which program data+bss is placed
377  start_brk     address above which program heap can be expanded with brk()
378  arg_start     address above which program command line is placed
379  arg_end       address below which program command line is placed
380  env_start     address above which program environment is placed
381  env_end       address below which program environment is placed
382  exit_code     the thread's exit_code in the form reported by the waitpid
383		system call
384  ============= ===============================================================
385
386The /proc/PID/maps file contains the currently mapped memory regions and
387their access permissions.
388
389The format is::
390
391    address           perms offset  dev   inode      pathname
392
393    08048000-08049000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8312       /opt/test
394    08049000-0804a000 rw-p 00001000 03:00 8312       /opt/test
395    0804a000-0806b000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [heap]
396    a7cb1000-a7cb2000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0
397    a7cb2000-a7eb2000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
398    a7eb2000-a7eb3000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0
399    a7eb3000-a7ed5000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
400    a7ed5000-a8008000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
401    a8008000-a800a000 r--p 00133000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
402    a800a000-a800b000 rw-p 00135000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
403    a800b000-a800e000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
404    a800e000-a8022000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
405    a8022000-a8023000 r--p 00013000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
406    a8023000-a8024000 rw-p 00014000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
407    a8024000-a8027000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
408    a8027000-a8043000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
409    a8043000-a8044000 r--p 0001b000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
410    a8044000-a8045000 rw-p 0001c000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
411    aff35000-aff4a000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [stack]
412    ffffe000-fffff000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [vdso]
413
414where "address" is the address space in the process that it occupies, "perms"
415is a set of permissions::
416
417 r = read
418 w = write
419 x = execute
420 s = shared
421 p = private (copy on write)
422
423"offset" is the offset into the mapping, "dev" is the device (major:minor), and
424"inode" is the inode  on that device.  0 indicates that  no inode is associated
425with the memory region, as the case would be with BSS (uninitialized data).
426The "pathname" shows the name associated file for this mapping.  If the mapping
427is not associated with a file:
428
429 =======                    ====================================
430 [heap]                     the heap of the program
431 [stack]                    the stack of the main process
432 [vdso]                     the "virtual dynamic shared object",
433                            the kernel system call handler
434 =======                    ====================================
435
436 or if empty, the mapping is anonymous.
437
438The /proc/PID/smaps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory
439consumption for each of the process's mappings. For each mapping (aka Virtual
440Memory Area, or VMA) there is a series of lines such as the following::
441
442    08048000-080bc000 r-xp 00000000 03:02 13130      /bin/bash
443
444    Size:               1084 kB
445    KernelPageSize:        4 kB
446    MMUPageSize:           4 kB
447    Rss:                 892 kB
448    Pss:                 374 kB
449    Shared_Clean:        892 kB
450    Shared_Dirty:          0 kB
451    Private_Clean:         0 kB
452    Private_Dirty:         0 kB
453    Referenced:          892 kB
454    Anonymous:             0 kB
455    LazyFree:              0 kB
456    AnonHugePages:         0 kB
457    ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
458    Shared_Hugetlb:        0 kB
459    Private_Hugetlb:       0 kB
460    Swap:                  0 kB
461    SwapPss:               0 kB
462    KernelPageSize:        4 kB
463    MMUPageSize:           4 kB
464    Locked:                0 kB
465    THPeligible:           0
466    VmFlags: rd ex mr mw me dw
467
468The first of these lines shows the same information as is displayed for the
469mapping in /proc/PID/maps.  Following lines show the size of the mapping
470(size); the size of each page allocated when backing a VMA (KernelPageSize),
471which is usually the same as the size in the page table entries; the page size
472used by the MMU when backing a VMA (in most cases, the same as KernelPageSize);
473the amount of the mapping that is currently resident in RAM (RSS); the
474process' proportional share of this mapping (PSS); and the number of clean and
475dirty shared and private pages in the mapping.
476
477The "proportional set size" (PSS) of a process is the count of pages it has
478in memory, where each page is divided by the number of processes sharing it.
479So if a process has 1000 pages all to itself, and 1000 shared with one other
480process, its PSS will be 1500.
481
482Note that even a page which is part of a MAP_SHARED mapping, but has only
483a single pte mapped, i.e.  is currently used by only one process, is accounted
484as private and not as shared.
485
486"Referenced" indicates the amount of memory currently marked as referenced or
487accessed.
488
489"Anonymous" shows the amount of memory that does not belong to any file.  Even
490a mapping associated with a file may contain anonymous pages: when MAP_PRIVATE
491and a page is modified, the file page is replaced by a private anonymous copy.
492
493"LazyFree" shows the amount of memory which is marked by madvise(MADV_FREE).
494The memory isn't freed immediately with madvise(). It's freed in memory
495pressure if the memory is clean. Please note that the printed value might
496be lower than the real value due to optimizations used in the current
497implementation. If this is not desirable please file a bug report.
498
499"AnonHugePages" shows the ammount of memory backed by transparent hugepage.
500
501"ShmemPmdMapped" shows the ammount of shared (shmem/tmpfs) memory backed by
502huge pages.
503
504"Shared_Hugetlb" and "Private_Hugetlb" show the ammounts of memory backed by
505hugetlbfs page which is *not* counted in "RSS" or "PSS" field for historical
506reasons. And these are not included in {Shared,Private}_{Clean,Dirty} field.
507
508"Swap" shows how much would-be-anonymous memory is also used, but out on swap.
509
510For shmem mappings, "Swap" includes also the size of the mapped (and not
511replaced by copy-on-write) part of the underlying shmem object out on swap.
512"SwapPss" shows proportional swap share of this mapping. Unlike "Swap", this
513does not take into account swapped out page of underlying shmem objects.
514"Locked" indicates whether the mapping is locked in memory or not.
515"THPeligible" indicates whether the mapping is eligible for allocating THP
516pages - 1 if true, 0 otherwise. It just shows the current status.
517
518"VmFlags" field deserves a separate description. This member represents the
519kernel flags associated with the particular virtual memory area in two letter
520encoded manner. The codes are the following:
521
522    ==    =======================================
523    rd    readable
524    wr    writeable
525    ex    executable
526    sh    shared
527    mr    may read
528    mw    may write
529    me    may execute
530    ms    may share
531    gd    stack segment growns down
532    pf    pure PFN range
533    dw    disabled write to the mapped file
534    lo    pages are locked in memory
535    io    memory mapped I/O area
536    sr    sequential read advise provided
537    rr    random read advise provided
538    dc    do not copy area on fork
539    de    do not expand area on remapping
540    ac    area is accountable
541    nr    swap space is not reserved for the area
542    ht    area uses huge tlb pages
543    ar    architecture specific flag
544    dd    do not include area into core dump
545    sd    soft dirty flag
546    mm    mixed map area
547    hg    huge page advise flag
548    nh    no huge page advise flag
549    mg    mergable advise flag
550    bt    arm64 BTI guarded page
551    mt    arm64 MTE allocation tags are enabled
552    ==    =======================================
553
554Note that there is no guarantee that every flag and associated mnemonic will
555be present in all further kernel releases. Things get changed, the flags may
556be vanished or the reverse -- new added. Interpretation of their meaning
557might change in future as well. So each consumer of these flags has to
558follow each specific kernel version for the exact semantic.
559
560This file is only present if the CONFIG_MMU kernel configuration option is
561enabled.
562
563Note: reading /proc/PID/maps or /proc/PID/smaps is inherently racy (consistent
564output can be achieved only in the single read call).
565
566This typically manifests when doing partial reads of these files while the
567memory map is being modified.  Despite the races, we do provide the following
568guarantees:
569
5701) The mapped addresses never go backwards, which implies no two
571   regions will ever overlap.
5722) If there is something at a given vaddr during the entirety of the
573   life of the smaps/maps walk, there will be some output for it.
574
575The /proc/PID/smaps_rollup file includes the same fields as /proc/PID/smaps,
576but their values are the sums of the corresponding values for all mappings of
577the process.  Additionally, it contains these fields:
578
579- Pss_Anon
580- Pss_File
581- Pss_Shmem
582
583They represent the proportional shares of anonymous, file, and shmem pages, as
584described for smaps above.  These fields are omitted in smaps since each
585mapping identifies the type (anon, file, or shmem) of all pages it contains.
586Thus all information in smaps_rollup can be derived from smaps, but at a
587significantly higher cost.
588
589The /proc/PID/clear_refs is used to reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG
590bits on both physical and virtual pages associated with a process, and the
591soft-dirty bit on pte (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/soft-dirty.rst
592for details).
593To clear the bits for all the pages associated with the process::
594
595    > echo 1 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
596
597To clear the bits for the anonymous pages associated with the process::
598
599    > echo 2 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
600
601To clear the bits for the file mapped pages associated with the process::
602
603    > echo 3 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
604
605To clear the soft-dirty bit::
606
607    > echo 4 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
608
609To reset the peak resident set size ("high water mark") to the process's
610current value::
611
612    > echo 5 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
613
614Any other value written to /proc/PID/clear_refs will have no effect.
615
616The /proc/pid/pagemap gives the PFN, which can be used to find the pageflags
617using /proc/kpageflags and number of times a page is mapped using
618/proc/kpagecount. For detailed explanation, see
619Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst.
620
621The /proc/pid/numa_maps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory
622locality and binding policy, as well as the memory usage (in pages) of
623each mapping. The output follows a general format where mapping details get
624summarized separated by blank spaces, one mapping per each file line::
625
626    address   policy    mapping details
627
628    00400000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app mapped=1 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
629    00600000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
630    3206000000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so mapped=26 mapmax=6 N0=24 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
631    320621f000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
632    3206220000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
633    3206221000 default anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
634    3206800000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so mapped=59 mapmax=21 active=55 N0=41 N3=18 kernelpagesize_kB=4
635    320698b000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so
636    3206b8a000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=2 dirty=2 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
637    3206b8e000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
638    3206b8f000 default anon=3 dirty=3 active=1 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
639    7f4dc10a2000 default anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
640    7f4dc10b4000 default anon=2 dirty=2 active=1 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
641    7f4dc1200000 default file=/anon_hugepage\040(deleted) huge anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=2048
642    7fff335f0000 default stack anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
643    7fff3369d000 default mapped=1 mapmax=35 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
644
645Where:
646
647"address" is the starting address for the mapping;
648
649"policy" reports the NUMA memory policy set for the mapping (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numa_memory_policy.rst);
650
651"mapping details" summarizes mapping data such as mapping type, page usage counters,
652node locality page counters (N0 == node0, N1 == node1, ...) and the kernel page
653size, in KB, that is backing the mapping up.
654
6551.2 Kernel data
656---------------
657
658Similar to  the  process entries, the kernel data files give information about
659the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in
660/proc and  are  listed  in Table 1-5. Not all of these will be present in your
661system. It  depends  on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which
662files are there, and which are missing.
663
664.. table:: Table 1-5: Kernel info in /proc
665
666 ============ ===============================================================
667 File         Content
668 ============ ===============================================================
669 apm          Advanced power management info
670 buddyinfo    Kernel memory allocator information (see text)	(2.5)
671 bus          Directory containing bus specific information
672 cmdline      Kernel command line
673 cpuinfo      Info about the CPU
674 devices      Available devices (block and character)
675 dma          Used DMS channels
676 filesystems  Supported filesystems
677 driver       Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc	(2.4)
678 execdomains  Execdomains, related to security			(2.4)
679 fb 	      Frame Buffer devices				(2.4)
680 fs 	      File system parameters, currently nfs/exports	(2.4)
681 ide          Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem
682 interrupts   Interrupt usage
683 iomem 	      Memory map					(2.4)
684 ioports      I/O port usage
685 irq 	      Masks for irq to cpu affinity			(2.4)(smp?)
686 isapnp       ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info				(2.4)
687 kcore        Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4))
688 kmsg         Kernel messages
689 ksyms        Kernel symbol table
690 loadavg      Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes;
691                number of processes currently runnable (running or on ready queue);
692                total number of processes in system;
693                last pid created.
694 locks        Kernel locks
695 meminfo      Memory info
696 misc         Miscellaneous
697 modules      List of loaded modules
698 mounts       Mounted filesystems
699 net          Networking info (see text)
700 pagetypeinfo Additional page allocator information (see text)  (2.5)
701 partitions   Table of partitions known to the system
702 pci 	      Deprecated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/,
703              decoupled by lspci				(2.4)
704 rtc          Real time clock
705 scsi         SCSI info (see text)
706 slabinfo     Slab pool info
707 softirqs     softirq usage
708 stat         Overall statistics
709 swaps        Swap space utilization
710 sys          See chapter 2
711 sysvipc      Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm)		(2.4)
712 tty 	      Info of tty drivers
713 uptime       Wall clock since boot, combined idle time of all cpus
714 version      Kernel version
715 video 	      bttv info of video resources			(2.4)
716 vmallocinfo  Show vmalloced areas
717 ============ ===============================================================
718
719You can,  for  example,  check  which interrupts are currently in use and what
720they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts::
721
722  > cat /proc/interrupts
723             CPU0
724    0:    8728810          XT-PIC  timer
725    1:        895          XT-PIC  keyboard
726    2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
727    3:     531695          XT-PIC  aha152x
728    4:    2014133          XT-PIC  serial
729    5:      44401          XT-PIC  pcnet_cs
730    8:          2          XT-PIC  rtc
731   11:          8          XT-PIC  i82365
732   12:     182918          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse
733   13:          1          XT-PIC  fpu
734   14:    1232265          XT-PIC  ide0
735   15:          7          XT-PIC  ide1
736  NMI:          0
737
738In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the
739output of a SMP machine)::
740
741  > cat /proc/interrupts
742
743             CPU0       CPU1
744    0:    1243498    1214548    IO-APIC-edge  timer
745    1:       8949       8958    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
746    2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
747    5:      11286      10161    IO-APIC-edge  soundblaster
748    8:          1          0    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
749    9:      27422      27407    IO-APIC-edge  3c503
750   12:     113645     113873    IO-APIC-edge  PS/2 Mouse
751   13:          0          0          XT-PIC  fpu
752   14:      22491      24012    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
753   15:       2183       2415    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
754   17:      30564      30414   IO-APIC-level  eth0
755   18:        177        164   IO-APIC-level  bttv
756  NMI:    2457961    2457959
757  LOC:    2457882    2457881
758  ERR:       2155
759
760NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI
761(Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.
762
763LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.
764
765ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that
766connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected,
767the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big
768problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.
769
770In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again.  This time the goal was for
771/proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not
772just those considered 'most important'.  The new vectors are:
773
774THR
775  interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter
776  (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds
777  a configurable threshold.  Only available on some systems.
778
779TRM
780  a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold
781  has been exceeded for the CPU.  This interrupt may also be generated
782  when the temperature drops back to normal.
783
784SPU
785  a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered
786  by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC.  Hence
787  the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from.
788  For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector
789  of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.
790
791RES, CAL, TLB
792  rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are
793  sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS.  Typically,
794  their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to
795  determine the occurrence of interrupts of the given type.
796
797The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevant.  For example,
798the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms.  Others are
799suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor.  As of this writing, only
800i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.
801
802Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4.
803It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity. This means that you can "hook" an
804IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the
805irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and two files; default_smp_affinity and
806prof_cpu_mask.
807
808For example::
809
810  > ls /proc/irq/
811  0  10  12  14  16  18  2  4  6  8  prof_cpu_mask
812  1  11  13  15  17  19  3  5  7  9  default_smp_affinity
813  > ls /proc/irq/0/
814  smp_affinity
815
816smp_affinity is a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the
817IRQ. You can set it by doing::
818
819  > echo 1 > /proc/irq/10/smp_affinity
820
821This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo
8225 which means that only the first and third CPU can handle the IRQ.
823
824The contents of each smp_affinity file is the same by default::
825
826  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity
827  ffffffff
828
829There is an alternate interface, smp_affinity_list which allows specifying
830a CPU range instead of a bitmask::
831
832  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity_list
833  1024-1031
834
835The default_smp_affinity mask applies to all non-active IRQs, which are the
836IRQs which have not yet been allocated/activated, and hence which lack a
837/proc/irq/[0-9]* directory.
838
839The node file on an SMP system shows the node to which the device using the IRQ
840reports itself as being attached. This hardware locality information does not
841include information about any possible driver locality preference.
842
843prof_cpu_mask specifies which CPUs are to be profiled by the system wide
844profiler. Default value is ffffffff (all CPUs if there are only 32 of them).
845
846The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin
847between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has
848more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the
849best choice for almost everyone.  [Note this applies only to those IO-APIC's
850that support "Round Robin" interrupt distribution.]
851
852There are  three  more  important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys.
853The general  rule  is  that  the  contents,  or  even  the  existence of these
854directories, depend  on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the
855directory scsi  may  not  exist. The same is true with the net, which is there
856only when networking support is present in the running kernel.
857
858The slabinfo  file  gives  information  about  memory usage at the slab level.
859Linux uses  slab  pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2.
860Commonly used  objects  have  their  own  slab  pool (such as network buffers,
861directory cache, and so on).
862
863::
864
865    > cat /proc/buddyinfo
866
867    Node 0, zone      DMA      0      4      5      4      4      3 ...
868    Node 0, zone   Normal      1      0      0      1    101      8 ...
869    Node 0, zone  HighMem      2      0      0      1      1      0 ...
870
871External fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a
872useful tool for helping diagnose these problems.  Buddyinfo will give you a
873clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous
874allocation failed.
875
876Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are
877available.  In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in
878ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE
879available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc...
880
881More information relevant to external fragmentation can be found in
882pagetypeinfo::
883
884    > cat /proc/pagetypeinfo
885    Page block order: 9
886    Pages per block:  512
887
888    Free pages count per migrate type at order       0      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9     10
889    Node    0, zone      DMA, type    Unmovable      0      0      0      1      1      1      1      1      1      1      0
890    Node    0, zone      DMA, type  Reclaimable      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
891    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Movable      1      1      2      1      2      1      1      0      1      0      2
892    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Reserve      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      1      0
893    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Isolate      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
894    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type    Unmovable    103     54     77      1      1      1     11      8      7      1      9
895    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type  Reclaimable      0      0      2      1      0      0      0      0      1      0      0
896    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Movable    169    152    113     91     77     54     39     13      6      1    452
897    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Reserve      1      2      2      2      2      0      1      1      1      1      0
898    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Isolate      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
899
900    Number of blocks type     Unmovable  Reclaimable      Movable      Reserve      Isolate
901    Node 0, zone      DMA            2            0            5            1            0
902    Node 0, zone    DMA32           41            6          967            2            0
903
904Fragmentation avoidance in the kernel works by grouping pages of different
905migrate types into the same contiguous regions of memory called page blocks.
906A page block is typically the size of the default hugepage size, e.g. 2MB on
907X86-64. By keeping pages grouped based on their ability to move, the kernel
908can reclaim pages within a page block to satisfy a high-order allocation.
909
910The pagetypinfo begins with information on the size of a page block. It
911then gives the same type of information as buddyinfo except broken down
912by migrate-type and finishes with details on how many page blocks of each
913type exist.
914
915If min_free_kbytes has been tuned correctly (recommendations made by hugeadm
916from libhugetlbfs https://github.com/libhugetlbfs/libhugetlbfs/), one can
917make an estimate of the likely number of huge pages that can be allocated
918at a given point in time. All the "Movable" blocks should be allocatable
919unless memory has been mlock()'d. Some of the Reclaimable blocks should
920also be allocatable although a lot of filesystem metadata may have to be
921reclaimed to achieve this.
922
923
924meminfo
925~~~~~~~
926
927Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory.  This
928varies by architecture and compile options.  The following is from a
92916GB PIII, which has highmem enabled.  You may not have all of these fields.
930
931::
932
933    > cat /proc/meminfo
934
935    MemTotal:     16344972 kB
936    MemFree:      13634064 kB
937    MemAvailable: 14836172 kB
938    Buffers:          3656 kB
939    Cached:        1195708 kB
940    SwapCached:          0 kB
941    Active:         891636 kB
942    Inactive:      1077224 kB
943    HighTotal:    15597528 kB
944    HighFree:     13629632 kB
945    LowTotal:       747444 kB
946    LowFree:          4432 kB
947    SwapTotal:           0 kB
948    SwapFree:            0 kB
949    Dirty:             968 kB
950    Writeback:           0 kB
951    AnonPages:      861800 kB
952    Mapped:         280372 kB
953    Shmem:             644 kB
954    KReclaimable:   168048 kB
955    Slab:           284364 kB
956    SReclaimable:   159856 kB
957    SUnreclaim:     124508 kB
958    PageTables:      24448 kB
959    NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
960    Bounce:              0 kB
961    WritebackTmp:        0 kB
962    CommitLimit:   7669796 kB
963    Committed_AS:   100056 kB
964    VmallocTotal:   112216 kB
965    VmallocUsed:       428 kB
966    VmallocChunk:   111088 kB
967    Percpu:          62080 kB
968    HardwareCorrupted:   0 kB
969    AnonHugePages:   49152 kB
970    ShmemHugePages:      0 kB
971    ShmemPmdMapped:      0 kB
972
973MemTotal
974              Total usable RAM (i.e. physical RAM minus a few reserved
975              bits and the kernel binary code)
976MemFree
977              The sum of LowFree+HighFree
978MemAvailable
979              An estimate of how much memory is available for starting new
980              applications, without swapping. Calculated from MemFree,
981              SReclaimable, the size of the file LRU lists, and the low
982              watermarks in each zone.
983              The estimate takes into account that the system needs some
984              page cache to function well, and that not all reclaimable
985              slab will be reclaimable, due to items being in use. The
986              impact of those factors will vary from system to system.
987Buffers
988              Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
989              shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
990Cached
991              in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
992              pagecache).  Doesn't include SwapCached
993SwapCached
994              Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but
995              still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it
996              doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already
997              in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
998Active
999              Memory that has been used more recently and usually not
1000              reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
1001Inactive
1002              Memory which has been less recently used.  It is more
1003              eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
1004HighTotal, HighFree
1005              Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory.
1006              Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or
1007              for the pagecache.  The kernel must use tricks to access
1008              this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
1009LowTotal, LowFree
1010              Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that
1011              highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the
1012              kernel's use for its own data structures.  Among many
1013              other things, it is where everything from the Slab is
1014              allocated.  Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
1015SwapTotal
1016              total amount of swap space available
1017SwapFree
1018              Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily
1019              on the disk
1020Dirty
1021              Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
1022Writeback
1023              Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
1024AnonPages
1025              Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables
1026HardwareCorrupted
1027              The amount of RAM/memory in KB, the kernel identifies as
1028	      corrupted.
1029AnonHugePages
1030              Non-file backed huge pages mapped into userspace page tables
1031Mapped
1032              files which have been mmaped, such as libraries
1033Shmem
1034              Total memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs
1035ShmemHugePages
1036              Memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs allocated
1037              with huge pages
1038ShmemPmdMapped
1039              Shared memory mapped into userspace with huge pages
1040KReclaimable
1041              Kernel allocations that the kernel will attempt to reclaim
1042              under memory pressure. Includes SReclaimable (below), and other
1043              direct allocations with a shrinker.
1044Slab
1045              in-kernel data structures cache
1046SReclaimable
1047              Part of Slab, that might be reclaimed, such as caches
1048SUnreclaim
1049              Part of Slab, that cannot be reclaimed on memory pressure
1050PageTables
1051              amount of memory dedicated to the lowest level of page
1052              tables.
1053NFS_Unstable
1054              Always zero. Previous counted pages which had been written to
1055              the server, but has not been committed to stable storage.
1056Bounce
1057              Memory used for block device "bounce buffers"
1058WritebackTmp
1059              Memory used by FUSE for temporary writeback buffers
1060CommitLimit
1061              Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'),
1062              this is the total amount of  memory currently available to
1063              be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to
1064              if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in
1065              'vm.overcommit_memory').
1066
1067              The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula::
1068
1069                CommitLimit = ([total RAM pages] - [total huge TLB pages]) *
1070                               overcommit_ratio / 100 + [total swap pages]
1071
1072              For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G
1073              of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would
1074              yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
1075
1076              For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation
1077              in vm/overcommit-accounting.
1078Committed_AS
1079              The amount of memory presently allocated on the system.
1080              The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which
1081              has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been
1082              "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G
1083              of memory, but only touches 300M of it will show up as
1084	      using 1G. This 1G is memory which has been "committed" to
1085              by the VM and can be used at any time by the allocating
1086              application. With strict overcommit enabled on the system
1087              (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'), allocations which would
1088              exceed the CommitLimit (detailed above) will not be permitted.
1089              This is useful if one needs to guarantee that processes will
1090              not fail due to lack of memory once that memory has been
1091              successfully allocated.
1092VmallocTotal
1093              total size of vmalloc memory area
1094VmallocUsed
1095              amount of vmalloc area which is used
1096VmallocChunk
1097              largest contiguous block of vmalloc area which is free
1098Percpu
1099              Memory allocated to the percpu allocator used to back percpu
1100              allocations. This stat excludes the cost of metadata.
1101
1102vmallocinfo
1103~~~~~~~~~~~
1104
1105Provides information about vmalloced/vmaped areas. One line per area,
1106containing the virtual address range of the area, size in bytes,
1107caller information of the creator, and optional information depending
1108on the kind of area:
1109
1110 ==========  ===================================================
1111 pages=nr    number of pages
1112 phys=addr   if a physical address was specified
1113 ioremap     I/O mapping (ioremap() and friends)
1114 vmalloc     vmalloc() area
1115 vmap        vmap()ed pages
1116 user        VM_USERMAP area
1117 vpages      buffer for pages pointers was vmalloced (huge area)
1118 N<node>=nr  (Only on NUMA kernels)
1119             Number of pages allocated on memory node <node>
1120 ==========  ===================================================
1121
1122::
1123
1124    > cat /proc/vmallocinfo
1125    0xffffc20000000000-0xffffc20000201000 2101248 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
1126    /0x2c0 pages=512 vmalloc N0=128 N1=128 N2=128 N3=128
1127    0xffffc20000201000-0xffffc20000302000 1052672 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
1128    /0x2c0 pages=256 vmalloc N0=64 N1=64 N2=64 N3=64
1129    0xffffc20000302000-0xffffc20000304000    8192 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
1130    phys=7fee8000 ioremap
1131    0xffffc20000304000-0xffffc20000307000   12288 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
1132    phys=7fee7000 ioremap
1133    0xffffc2000031d000-0xffffc2000031f000    8192 init_vdso_vars+0x112/0x210
1134    0xffffc2000031f000-0xffffc2000032b000   49152 cramfs_uncompress_init+0x2e ...
1135    /0x80 pages=11 vmalloc N0=3 N1=3 N2=2 N3=3
1136    0xffffc2000033a000-0xffffc2000033d000   12288 sys_swapon+0x640/0xac0      ...
1137    pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
1138    0xffffc20000347000-0xffffc2000034c000   20480 xt_alloc_table_info+0xfe ...
1139    /0x130 [x_tables] pages=4 vmalloc N0=4
1140    0xffffffffa0000000-0xffffffffa000f000   61440 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1141    pages=14 vmalloc N2=14
1142    0xffffffffa000f000-0xffffffffa0014000   20480 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1143    pages=4 vmalloc N1=4
1144    0xffffffffa0014000-0xffffffffa0017000   12288 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1145    pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
1146    0xffffffffa0017000-0xffffffffa0022000   45056 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1147    pages=10 vmalloc N0=10
1148
1149
1150softirqs
1151~~~~~~~~
1152
1153Provides counts of softirq handlers serviced since boot time, for each CPU.
1154
1155::
1156
1157    > cat /proc/softirqs
1158		  CPU0       CPU1       CPU2       CPU3
1159	HI:          0          0          0          0
1160    TIMER:       27166      27120      27097      27034
1161    NET_TX:          0          0          0         17
1162    NET_RX:         42          0          0         39
1163    BLOCK:           0          0        107       1121
1164    TASKLET:         0          0          0        290
1165    SCHED:       27035      26983      26971      26746
1166    HRTIMER:         0          0          0          0
1167	RCU:      1678       1769       2178       2250
1168
1169
11701.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
1171----------------------------
1172
1173The subdirectory /proc/ide contains information about all IDE devices of which
1174the kernel  is  aware.  There is one subdirectory for each IDE controller, the
1175file drivers  and a link for each IDE device, pointing to the device directory
1176in the controller specific subtree.
1177
1178The file 'drivers' contains general information about the drivers used for the
1179IDE devices::
1180
1181  > cat /proc/ide/drivers
1182  ide-cdrom version 4.53
1183  ide-disk version 1.08
1184
1185More detailed  information  can  be  found  in  the  controller  specific
1186subdirectories. These  are  named  ide0,  ide1  and  so  on.  Each  of  these
1187directories contains the files shown in table 1-6.
1188
1189
1190.. table:: Table 1-6: IDE controller info in  /proc/ide/ide?
1191
1192 ======= =======================================
1193 File    Content
1194 ======= =======================================
1195 channel IDE channel (0 or 1)
1196 config  Configuration (only for PCI/IDE bridge)
1197 mate    Mate name
1198 model   Type/Chipset of IDE controller
1199 ======= =======================================
1200
1201Each device  connected  to  a  controller  has  a separate subdirectory in the
1202controllers directory.  The  files  listed in table 1-7 are contained in these
1203directories.
1204
1205
1206.. table:: Table 1-7: IDE device information
1207
1208 ================ ==========================================
1209 File             Content
1210 ================ ==========================================
1211 cache            The cache
1212 capacity         Capacity of the medium (in 512Byte blocks)
1213 driver           driver and version
1214 geometry         physical and logical geometry
1215 identify         device identify block
1216 media            media type
1217 model            device identifier
1218 settings         device setup
1219 smart_thresholds IDE disk management thresholds
1220 smart_values     IDE disk management values
1221 ================ ==========================================
1222
1223The most  interesting  file is ``settings``. This file contains a nice
1224overview of the drive parameters::
1225
1226  # cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings
1227  name                    value           min             max             mode
1228  ----                    -----           ---             ---             ----
1229  bios_cyl                526             0               65535           rw
1230  bios_head               255             0               255             rw
1231  bios_sect               63              0               63              rw
1232  breada_readahead        4               0               127             rw
1233  bswap                   0               0               1               r
1234  file_readahead          72              0               2097151         rw
1235  io_32bit                0               0               3               rw
1236  keepsettings            0               0               1               rw
1237  max_kb_per_request      122             1               127             rw
1238  multcount               0               0               8               rw
1239  nice1                   1               0               1               rw
1240  nowerr                  0               0               1               rw
1241  pio_mode                write-only      0               255             w
1242  slow                    0               0               1               rw
1243  unmaskirq               0               0               1               rw
1244  using_dma               0               0               1               rw
1245
1246
12471.4 Networking info in /proc/net
1248--------------------------------
1249
1250The subdirectory  /proc/net  follows  the  usual  pattern. Table 1-8 shows the
1251additional values  you  get  for  IP  version 6 if you configure the kernel to
1252support this. Table 1-9 lists the files and their meaning.
1253
1254
1255.. table:: Table 1-8: IPv6 info in /proc/net
1256
1257 ========== =====================================================
1258 File       Content
1259 ========== =====================================================
1260 udp6       UDP sockets (IPv6)
1261 tcp6       TCP sockets (IPv6)
1262 raw6       Raw device statistics (IPv6)
1263 igmp6      IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6)
1264 if_inet6   List of IPv6 interface addresses
1265 ipv6_route Kernel routing table for IPv6
1266 rt6_stats  Global IPv6 routing tables statistics
1267 sockstat6  Socket statistics (IPv6)
1268 snmp6      Snmp data (IPv6)
1269 ========== =====================================================
1270
1271.. table:: Table 1-9: Network info in /proc/net
1272
1273 ============= ================================================================
1274 File          Content
1275 ============= ================================================================
1276 arp           Kernel  ARP table
1277 dev           network devices with statistics
1278 dev_mcast     the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too
1279               (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound
1280               addresses).
1281 dev_stat      network device status
1282 ip_fwchains   Firewall chain linkage
1283 ip_fwnames    Firewall chain names
1284 ip_masq       Directory containing the masquerading tables
1285 ip_masquerade Major masquerading table
1286 netstat       Network statistics
1287 raw           raw device statistics
1288 route         Kernel routing table
1289 rpc           Directory containing rpc info
1290 rt_cache      Routing cache
1291 snmp          SNMP data
1292 sockstat      Socket statistics
1293 tcp           TCP  sockets
1294 udp           UDP sockets
1295 unix          UNIX domain sockets
1296 wireless      Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc)
1297 igmp          IP multicast addresses, which this host joined
1298 psched        Global packet scheduler parameters.
1299 netlink       List of PF_NETLINK sockets
1300 ip_mr_vifs    List of multicast virtual interfaces
1301 ip_mr_cache   List of multicast routing cache
1302 ============= ================================================================
1303
1304You can  use  this  information  to see which network devices are available in
1305your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices::
1306
1307  > cat /proc/net/dev
1308  Inter-|Receive                                                   |[...
1309   face |bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[...
1310      lo:  908188   5596     0    0    0     0          0         0 [...
1311    ppp0:15475140  20721   410    0    0   410          0         0 [...
1312    eth0:  614530   7085     0    0    0     0          0         1 [...
1313
1314  ...] Transmit
1315  ...] bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
1316  ...]  908188     5596    0    0    0     0       0          0
1317  ...] 1375103    17405    0    0    0     0       0          0
1318  ...] 1703981     5535    0    0    0     3       0          0
1319
1320In addition, each Channel Bond interface has its own directory.  For
1321example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/.
1322It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the
1323current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how
1324many times the slaves link has failed.
1325
13261.5 SCSI info
1327-------------
1328
1329If you  have  a  SCSI  host adapter in your system, you'll find a subdirectory
1330named after  the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi. You'll also see a list
1331of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi::
1332
1333  >cat /proc/scsi/scsi
1334  Attached devices:
1335  Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
1336    Vendor: IBM      Model: DGHS09U          Rev: 03E0
1337    Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 03
1338  Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
1339    Vendor: PIONEER  Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S   Rev: 1.04
1340    Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI SCSI revision: 02
1341
1342
1343The directory  named  after  the driver has one file for each adapter found in
1344the system.  These  files  contain information about the controller, including
1345the used  IRQ  and  the  IO  address range. The amount of information shown is
1346dependent on  the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec
1347AHA-2940 SCSI adapter::
1348
1349  > cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0
1350
1351  Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4
1352  Compile Options:
1353    TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled
1354    AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS     : Disabled
1355    AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY    : 5
1356  Adapter Configuration:
1357             SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter
1358                             Ultra Wide Controller
1359      PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000
1360   Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used.
1361        Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled
1362                      IRQ: 10
1363                     SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2,
1364                           Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255
1365               Interrupts: 160328
1366        BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6
1367     Adapter Control Word: 0x005b
1368     Extended Translation: Enabled
1369  Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff
1370       Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001
1371   Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000
1372  Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000
1373  Default Tag Queue Depth: 8
1374      Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0:
1375        {255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255}
1376      Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0:
1377        {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
1378  Statistics:
1379  (scsi0:0:0:0)
1380    Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8
1381    Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0)
1382    Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes)
1383  (scsi0:0:6:0)
1384    Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15
1385    Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0)
1386    Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes)
1387
1388
13891.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
1390---------------------------------------
1391
1392The directory  /proc/parport  contains information about the parallel ports of
1393your system.  It  has  one  subdirectory  for  each port, named after the port
1394number (0,1,2,...).
1395
1396These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-10.
1397
1398
1399.. table:: Table 1-10: Files in /proc/parport
1400
1401 ========= ====================================================================
1402 File      Content
1403 ========= ====================================================================
1404 autoprobe Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired.
1405 devices   list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the
1406           name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear
1407           against any).
1408 hardware  Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel.
1409 irq       IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate
1410           file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ
1411           number or none).
1412 ========= ====================================================================
1413
14141.7 TTY info in /proc/tty
1415-------------------------
1416
1417Information about  the  available  and actually used tty's can be found in the
1418directory /proc/tty. You'll find  entries  for drivers and line disciplines in
1419this directory, as shown in Table 1-11.
1420
1421
1422.. table:: Table 1-11: Files in /proc/tty
1423
1424 ============= ==============================================
1425 File          Content
1426 ============= ==============================================
1427 drivers       list of drivers and their usage
1428 ldiscs        registered line disciplines
1429 driver/serial usage statistic and status of single tty lines
1430 ============= ==============================================
1431
1432To see  which  tty's  are  currently in use, you can simply look into the file
1433/proc/tty/drivers::
1434
1435  > cat /proc/tty/drivers
1436  pty_slave            /dev/pts      136   0-255 pty:slave
1437  pty_master           /dev/ptm      128   0-255 pty:master
1438  pty_slave            /dev/ttyp       3   0-255 pty:slave
1439  pty_master           /dev/pty        2   0-255 pty:master
1440  serial               /dev/cua        5   64-67 serial:callout
1441  serial               /dev/ttyS       4   64-67 serial
1442  /dev/tty0            /dev/tty0       4       0 system:vtmaster
1443  /dev/ptmx            /dev/ptmx       5       2 system
1444  /dev/console         /dev/console    5       1 system:console
1445  /dev/tty             /dev/tty        5       0 system:/dev/tty
1446  unknown              /dev/tty        4    1-63 console
1447
1448
14491.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
1450-------------------------------------------------
1451
1452Various pieces   of  information about  kernel activity  are  available in the
1453/proc/stat file.  All  of  the numbers reported  in  this file are  aggregates
1454since the system first booted.  For a quick look, simply cat the file::
1455
1456  > cat /proc/stat
1457  cpu  2255 34 2290 22625563 6290 127 456 0 0 0
1458  cpu0 1132 34 1441 11311718 3675 127 438 0 0 0
1459  cpu1 1123 0 849 11313845 2614 0 18 0 0 0
1460  intr 114930548 113199788 3 0 5 263 0 4 [... lots more numbers ...]
1461  ctxt 1990473
1462  btime 1062191376
1463  processes 2915
1464  procs_running 1
1465  procs_blocked 0
1466  softirq 183433 0 21755 12 39 1137 231 21459 2263
1467
1468The very first  "cpu" line aggregates the  numbers in all  of the other "cpuN"
1469lines.  These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing
1470different kinds of work.  Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a
1471second).  The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
1472
1473- user: normal processes executing in user mode
1474- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
1475- system: processes executing in kernel mode
1476- idle: twiddling thumbs
1477- iowait: In a word, iowait stands for waiting for I/O to complete. But there
1478  are several problems:
1479
1480  1. CPU will not wait for I/O to complete, iowait is the time that a task is
1481     waiting for I/O to complete. When CPU goes into idle state for
1482     outstanding task I/O, another task will be scheduled on this CPU.
1483  2. In a multi-core CPU, the task waiting for I/O to complete is not running
1484     on any CPU, so the iowait of each CPU is difficult to calculate.
1485  3. The value of iowait field in /proc/stat will decrease in certain
1486     conditions.
1487
1488  So, the iowait is not reliable by reading from /proc/stat.
1489- irq: servicing interrupts
1490- softirq: servicing softirqs
1491- steal: involuntary wait
1492- guest: running a normal guest
1493- guest_nice: running a niced guest
1494
1495The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts  serviced since boot time, for each
1496of the  possible system interrupts.   The first  column  is the  total of  all
1497interrupts serviced  including  unnumbered  architecture specific  interrupts;
1498each  subsequent column is the  total for that particular numbered interrupt.
1499Unnumbered interrupts are not shown, only summed into the total.
1500
1501The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.
1502
1503The "btime" line gives  the time at which the  system booted, in seconds since
1504the Unix epoch.
1505
1506The "processes" line gives the number  of processes and threads created, which
1507includes (but  is not limited  to) those  created by  calls to the  fork() and
1508clone() system calls.
1509
1510The "procs_running" line gives the total number of threads that are
1511running or ready to run (i.e., the total number of runnable threads).
1512
1513The   "procs_blocked" line gives  the  number of  processes currently blocked,
1514waiting for I/O to complete.
1515
1516The "softirq" line gives counts of softirqs serviced since boot time, for each
1517of the possible system softirqs. The first column is the total of all
1518softirqs serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular
1519softirq.
1520
1521
15221.9 Ext4 file system parameters
1523-------------------------------
1524
1525Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in
1526/proc/fs/ext4.  Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
1527/proc/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /proc/fs/ext4/hdc or
1528/proc/fs/ext4/dm-0).   The files in each per-device directory are shown
1529in Table 1-12, below.
1530
1531.. table:: Table 1-12: Files in /proc/fs/ext4/<devname>
1532
1533 ==============  ==========================================================
1534 File            Content
1535 mb_groups       details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks
1536 ==============  ==========================================================
1537
15381.10 /proc/consoles
1539-------------------
1540Shows registered system console lines.
1541
1542To see which character device lines are currently used for the system console
1543/dev/console, you may simply look into the file /proc/consoles::
1544
1545  > cat /proc/consoles
1546  tty0                 -WU (ECp)       4:7
1547  ttyS0                -W- (Ep)        4:64
1548
1549The columns are:
1550
1551+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1552| device             | name of the device                                    |
1553+====================+=======================================================+
1554| operations         | * R = can do read operations                          |
1555|                    | * W = can do write operations                         |
1556|                    | * U = can do unblank                                  |
1557+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1558| flags              | * E = it is enabled                                   |
1559|                    | * C = it is preferred console                         |
1560|                    | * B = it is primary boot console                      |
1561|                    | * p = it is used for printk buffer                    |
1562|                    | * b = it is not a TTY but a Braille device            |
1563|                    | * a = it is safe to use when cpu is offline           |
1564+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1565| major:minor        | major and minor number of the device separated by a   |
1566|                    | colon                                                 |
1567+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1568
1569Summary
1570-------
1571
1572The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only
1573allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status
1574by reading files in the hierarchy.
1575
1576The directory  structure  of /proc reflects the types of information and makes
1577it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data.
1578
1579Chapter 2: Modifying System Parameters
1580======================================
1581
1582In This Chapter
1583---------------
1584
1585* Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys
1586* Exploring the files which modify certain parameters
1587* Review of the /proc/sys file tree
1588
1589------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1590
1591A very  interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only
1592a source  of  information,  it also allows you to change parameters within the
1593kernel. Be  very  careful  when attempting this. You can optimize your system,
1594but you  can  also  cause  it  to  crash.  Never  alter kernel parameters on a
1595production system.  Set  up  a  development machine and test to make sure that
1596everything works  the  way  you want it to. You may have no alternative but to
1597reboot the machine once an error has been made.
1598
1599To change  a  value,  simply  echo  the new value into the file.
1600You need to be root to do this. You  can  create  your  own  boot script
1601to perform this every time your system boots.
1602
1603The files  in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and
1604general things  in  the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files
1605can inadvertently  disrupt  your  system,  it  is  advisable  to  read  both
1606documentation and  source  before actually making adjustments. In any case, be
1607very careful  when  writing  to  any  of these files. The entries in /proc may
1608change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt
1609review the kernel documentation in the directory /usr/src/linux/Documentation.
1610This chapter  is  heavily  based  on the documentation included in the pre 2.2
1611kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel.
1612
1613Please see: Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/ directory for descriptions of these
1614entries.
1615
1616Summary
1617-------
1618
1619Certain aspects  of  kernel  behavior  can be modified at runtime, without the
1620need to  recompile  the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the
1621/proc/sys tree  can  not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo
1622command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings
1623of the kernel.
1624
1625
1626Chapter 3: Per-process Parameters
1627=================================
1628
16293.1 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj & /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj- Adjust the oom-killer score
1630--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1631
1632These files can be used to adjust the badness heuristic used to select which
1633process gets killed in out of memory (oom) conditions.
1634
1635The badness heuristic assigns a value to each candidate task ranging from 0
1636(never kill) to 1000 (always kill) to determine which process is targeted.  The
1637units are roughly a proportion along that range of allowed memory the process
1638may allocate from based on an estimation of its current memory and swap use.
1639For example, if a task is using all allowed memory, its badness score will be
16401000.  If it is using half of its allowed memory, its score will be 500.
1641
1642The amount of "allowed" memory depends on the context in which the oom killer
1643was called.  If it is due to the memory assigned to the allocating task's cpuset
1644being exhausted, the allowed memory represents the set of mems assigned to that
1645cpuset.  If it is due to a mempolicy's node(s) being exhausted, the allowed
1646memory represents the set of mempolicy nodes.  If it is due to a memory
1647limit (or swap limit) being reached, the allowed memory is that configured
1648limit.  Finally, if it is due to the entire system being out of memory, the
1649allowed memory represents all allocatable resources.
1650
1651The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj is added to the badness score before it
1652is used to determine which task to kill.  Acceptable values range from -1000
1653(OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MIN) to +1000 (OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MAX).  This allows userspace to
1654polarize the preference for oom killing either by always preferring a certain
1655task or completely disabling it.  The lowest possible value, -1000, is
1656equivalent to disabling oom killing entirely for that task since it will always
1657report a badness score of 0.
1658
1659Consequently, it is very simple for userspace to define the amount of memory to
1660consider for each task.  Setting a /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj value of +500, for
1661example, is roughly equivalent to allowing the remainder of tasks sharing the
1662same system, cpuset, mempolicy, or memory controller resources to use at least
166350% more memory.  A value of -500, on the other hand, would be roughly
1664equivalent to discounting 50% of the task's allowed memory from being considered
1665as scoring against the task.
1666
1667For backwards compatibility with previous kernels, /proc/<pid>/oom_adj may also
1668be used to tune the badness score.  Its acceptable values range from -16
1669(OOM_ADJUST_MIN) to +15 (OOM_ADJUST_MAX) and a special value of -17
1670(OOM_DISABLE) to disable oom killing entirely for that task.  Its value is
1671scaled linearly with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj.
1672
1673The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj may be reduced no lower than the last
1674value set by a CAP_SYS_RESOURCE process. To reduce the value any lower
1675requires CAP_SYS_RESOURCE.
1676
1677
16783.2 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
1679-------------------------------------------------------------
1680
1681This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer for
1682any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj to tune which
1683process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.
1684
1685Please note that the exported value includes oom_score_adj so it is
1686effectively in range [0,2000].
1687
1688
16893.3  /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
1690-------------------------------------------------------
1691
1692This file contains IO statistics for each running process.
1693
1694Example
1695~~~~~~~
1696
1697::
1698
1699    test:/tmp # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.dat &
1700    [1] 3828
1701
1702    test:/tmp # cat /proc/3828/io
1703    rchar: 323934931
1704    wchar: 323929600
1705    syscr: 632687
1706    syscw: 632675
1707    read_bytes: 0
1708    write_bytes: 323932160
1709    cancelled_write_bytes: 0
1710
1711
1712Description
1713~~~~~~~~~~~
1714
1715rchar
1716^^^^^
1717
1718I/O counter: chars read
1719The number of bytes which this task has caused to be read from storage. This
1720is simply the sum of bytes which this process passed to read() and pread().
1721It includes things like tty IO and it is unaffected by whether or not actual
1722physical disk IO was required (the read might have been satisfied from
1723pagecache).
1724
1725
1726wchar
1727^^^^^
1728
1729I/O counter: chars written
1730The number of bytes which this task has caused, or shall cause to be written
1731to disk. Similar caveats apply here as with rchar.
1732
1733
1734syscr
1735^^^^^
1736
1737I/O counter: read syscalls
1738Attempt to count the number of read I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like read()
1739and pread().
1740
1741
1742syscw
1743^^^^^
1744
1745I/O counter: write syscalls
1746Attempt to count the number of write I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like
1747write() and pwrite().
1748
1749
1750read_bytes
1751^^^^^^^^^^
1752
1753I/O counter: bytes read
1754Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process really did cause to
1755be fetched from the storage layer. Done at the submit_bio() level, so it is
1756accurate for block-backed filesystems. <please add status regarding NFS and
1757CIFS at a later time>
1758
1759
1760write_bytes
1761^^^^^^^^^^^
1762
1763I/O counter: bytes written
1764Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process caused to be sent to
1765the storage layer. This is done at page-dirtying time.
1766
1767
1768cancelled_write_bytes
1769^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1770
1771The big inaccuracy here is truncate. If a process writes 1MB to a file and
1772then deletes the file, it will in fact perform no writeout. But it will have
1773been accounted as having caused 1MB of write.
1774In other words: The number of bytes which this process caused to not happen,
1775by truncating pagecache. A task can cause "negative" IO too. If this task
1776truncates some dirty pagecache, some IO which another task has been accounted
1777for (in its write_bytes) will not be happening. We _could_ just subtract that
1778from the truncating task's write_bytes, but there is information loss in doing
1779that.
1780
1781
1782.. Note::
1783
1784   At its current implementation state, this is a bit racy on 32-bit machines:
1785   if process A reads process B's /proc/pid/io while process B is updating one
1786   of those 64-bit counters, process A could see an intermediate result.
1787
1788
1789More information about this can be found within the taskstats documentation in
1790Documentation/accounting.
1791
17923.4 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
1793---------------------------------------------------------------
1794When a process is dumped, all anonymous memory is written to a core file as
1795long as the size of the core file isn't limited. But sometimes we don't want
1796to dump some memory segments, for example, huge shared memory or DAX.
1797Conversely, sometimes we want to save file-backed memory segments into a core
1798file, not only the individual files.
1799
1800/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter allows you to customize which memory segments
1801will be dumped when the <pid> process is dumped. coredump_filter is a bitmask
1802of memory types. If a bit of the bitmask is set, memory segments of the
1803corresponding memory type are dumped, otherwise they are not dumped.
1804
1805The following 9 memory types are supported:
1806
1807  - (bit 0) anonymous private memory
1808  - (bit 1) anonymous shared memory
1809  - (bit 2) file-backed private memory
1810  - (bit 3) file-backed shared memory
1811  - (bit 4) ELF header pages in file-backed private memory areas (it is
1812    effective only if the bit 2 is cleared)
1813  - (bit 5) hugetlb private memory
1814  - (bit 6) hugetlb shared memory
1815  - (bit 7) DAX private memory
1816  - (bit 8) DAX shared memory
1817
1818  Note that MMIO pages such as frame buffer are never dumped and vDSO pages
1819  are always dumped regardless of the bitmask status.
1820
1821  Note that bits 0-4 don't affect hugetlb or DAX memory. hugetlb memory is
1822  only affected by bit 5-6, and DAX is only affected by bits 7-8.
1823
1824The default value of coredump_filter is 0x33; this means all anonymous memory
1825segments, ELF header pages and hugetlb private memory are dumped.
1826
1827If you don't want to dump all shared memory segments attached to pid 1234,
1828write 0x31 to the process's proc file::
1829
1830  $ echo 0x31 > /proc/1234/coredump_filter
1831
1832When a new process is created, the process inherits the bitmask status from its
1833parent. It is useful to set up coredump_filter before the program runs.
1834For example::
1835
1836  $ echo 0x7 > /proc/self/coredump_filter
1837  $ ./some_program
1838
18393.5	/proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
1840--------------------------------------------------------
1841
1842This file contains lines of the form::
1843
1844    36 35 98:0 /mnt1 /mnt2 rw,noatime master:1 - ext3 /dev/root rw,errors=continue
1845    (1)(2)(3)   (4)   (5)      (6)      (7)   (8) (9)   (10)         (11)
1846
1847    (1) mount ID:  unique identifier of the mount (may be reused after umount)
1848    (2) parent ID:  ID of parent (or of self for the top of the mount tree)
1849    (3) major:minor:  value of st_dev for files on filesystem
1850    (4) root:  root of the mount within the filesystem
1851    (5) mount point:  mount point relative to the process's root
1852    (6) mount options:  per mount options
1853    (7) optional fields:  zero or more fields of the form "tag[:value]"
1854    (8) separator:  marks the end of the optional fields
1855    (9) filesystem type:  name of filesystem of the form "type[.subtype]"
1856    (10) mount source:  filesystem specific information or "none"
1857    (11) super options:  per super block options
1858
1859Parsers should ignore all unrecognised optional fields.  Currently the
1860possible optional fields are:
1861
1862================  ==============================================================
1863shared:X          mount is shared in peer group X
1864master:X          mount is slave to peer group X
1865propagate_from:X  mount is slave and receives propagation from peer group X [#]_
1866unbindable        mount is unbindable
1867================  ==============================================================
1868
1869.. [#] X is the closest dominant peer group under the process's root.  If
1870       X is the immediate master of the mount, or if there's no dominant peer
1871       group under the same root, then only the "master:X" field is present
1872       and not the "propagate_from:X" field.
1873
1874For more information on mount propagation see:
1875
1876  Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.rst
1877
1878
18793.6	/proc/<pid>/comm  & /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/comm
1880--------------------------------------------------------
1881These files provide a method to access a task's comm value. It also allows for
1882a task to set its own or one of its thread siblings comm value. The comm value
1883is limited in size compared to the cmdline value, so writing anything longer
1884then the kernel's TASK_COMM_LEN (currently 16 chars) will result in a truncated
1885comm value.
1886
1887
18883.7	/proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/children - Information about task children
1889-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1890This file provides a fast way to retrieve first level children pids
1891of a task pointed by <pid>/<tid> pair. The format is a space separated
1892stream of pids.
1893
1894Note the "first level" here -- if a child has its own children they will
1895not be listed here; one needs to read /proc/<children-pid>/task/<tid>/children
1896to obtain the descendants.
1897
1898Since this interface is intended to be fast and cheap it doesn't
1899guarantee to provide precise results and some children might be
1900skipped, especially if they've exited right after we printed their
1901pids, so one needs to either stop or freeze processes being inspected
1902if precise results are needed.
1903
1904
19053.8	/proc/<pid>/fdinfo/<fd> - Information about opened file
1906---------------------------------------------------------------
1907This file provides information associated with an opened file. The regular
1908files have at least three fields -- 'pos', 'flags' and 'mnt_id'. The 'pos'
1909represents the current offset of the opened file in decimal form [see lseek(2)
1910for details], 'flags' denotes the octal O_xxx mask the file has been
1911created with [see open(2) for details] and 'mnt_id' represents mount ID of
1912the file system containing the opened file [see 3.5 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo
1913for details].
1914
1915A typical output is::
1916
1917	pos:	0
1918	flags:	0100002
1919	mnt_id:	19
1920
1921All locks associated with a file descriptor are shown in its fdinfo too::
1922
1923    lock:       1: FLOCK  ADVISORY  WRITE 359 00:13:11691 0 EOF
1924
1925The files such as eventfd, fsnotify, signalfd, epoll among the regular pos/flags
1926pair provide additional information particular to the objects they represent.
1927
1928Eventfd files
1929~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1930
1931::
1932
1933	pos:	0
1934	flags:	04002
1935	mnt_id:	9
1936	eventfd-count:	5a
1937
1938where 'eventfd-count' is hex value of a counter.
1939
1940Signalfd files
1941~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1942
1943::
1944
1945	pos:	0
1946	flags:	04002
1947	mnt_id:	9
1948	sigmask:	0000000000000200
1949
1950where 'sigmask' is hex value of the signal mask associated
1951with a file.
1952
1953Epoll files
1954~~~~~~~~~~~
1955
1956::
1957
1958	pos:	0
1959	flags:	02
1960	mnt_id:	9
1961	tfd:        5 events:       1d data: ffffffffffffffff pos:0 ino:61af sdev:7
1962
1963where 'tfd' is a target file descriptor number in decimal form,
1964'events' is events mask being watched and the 'data' is data
1965associated with a target [see epoll(7) for more details].
1966
1967The 'pos' is current offset of the target file in decimal form
1968[see lseek(2)], 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device numbers
1969where target file resides, all in hex format.
1970
1971Fsnotify files
1972~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1973For inotify files the format is the following::
1974
1975	pos:	0
1976	flags:	02000000
1977	inotify wd:3 ino:9e7e sdev:800013 mask:800afce ignored_mask:0 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:7e9e0000640d1b6d
1978
1979where 'wd' is a watch descriptor in decimal form, i.e. a target file
1980descriptor number, 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device where the
1981target file resides and the 'mask' is the mask of events, all in hex
1982form [see inotify(7) for more details].
1983
1984If the kernel was built with exportfs support, the path to the target
1985file is encoded as a file handle.  The file handle is provided by three
1986fields 'fhandle-bytes', 'fhandle-type' and 'f_handle', all in hex
1987format.
1988
1989If the kernel is built without exportfs support the file handle won't be
1990printed out.
1991
1992If there is no inotify mark attached yet the 'inotify' line will be omitted.
1993
1994For fanotify files the format is::
1995
1996	pos:	0
1997	flags:	02
1998	mnt_id:	9
1999	fanotify flags:10 event-flags:0
2000	fanotify mnt_id:12 mflags:40 mask:38 ignored_mask:40000003
2001	fanotify ino:4f969 sdev:800013 mflags:0 mask:3b ignored_mask:40000000 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:69f90400c275b5b4
2002
2003where fanotify 'flags' and 'event-flags' are values used in fanotify_init
2004call, 'mnt_id' is the mount point identifier, 'mflags' is the value of
2005flags associated with mark which are tracked separately from events
2006mask. 'ino' and 'sdev' are target inode and device, 'mask' is the events
2007mask and 'ignored_mask' is the mask of events which are to be ignored.
2008All are in hex format. Incorporation of 'mflags', 'mask' and 'ignored_mask'
2009provide information about flags and mask used in fanotify_mark
2010call [see fsnotify manpage for details].
2011
2012While the first three lines are mandatory and always printed, the rest is
2013optional and may be omitted if no marks created yet.
2014
2015Timerfd files
2016~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2017
2018::
2019
2020	pos:	0
2021	flags:	02
2022	mnt_id:	9
2023	clockid: 0
2024	ticks: 0
2025	settime flags: 01
2026	it_value: (0, 49406829)
2027	it_interval: (1, 0)
2028
2029where 'clockid' is the clock type and 'ticks' is the number of the timer expirations
2030that have occurred [see timerfd_create(2) for details]. 'settime flags' are
2031flags in octal form been used to setup the timer [see timerfd_settime(2) for
2032details]. 'it_value' is remaining time until the timer expiration.
2033'it_interval' is the interval for the timer. Note the timer might be set up
2034with TIMER_ABSTIME option which will be shown in 'settime flags', but 'it_value'
2035still exhibits timer's remaining time.
2036
20373.9	/proc/<pid>/map_files - Information about memory mapped files
2038---------------------------------------------------------------------
2039This directory contains symbolic links which represent memory mapped files
2040the process is maintaining.  Example output::
2041
2042     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c600000-333c620000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2043     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c81f000-333c820000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2044     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c820000-333c821000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2045     | ...
2046     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 35d0421000-35d0422000 -> /usr/lib64/libselinux.so.1
2047     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 400000-41a000 -> /usr/bin/ls
2048
2049The name of a link represents the virtual memory bounds of a mapping, i.e.
2050vm_area_struct::vm_start-vm_area_struct::vm_end.
2051
2052The main purpose of the map_files is to retrieve a set of memory mapped
2053files in a fast way instead of parsing /proc/<pid>/maps or
2054/proc/<pid>/smaps, both of which contain many more records.  At the same
2055time one can open(2) mappings from the listings of two processes and
2056comparing their inode numbers to figure out which anonymous memory areas
2057are actually shared.
2058
20593.10	/proc/<pid>/timerslack_ns - Task timerslack value
2060---------------------------------------------------------
2061This file provides the value of the task's timerslack value in nanoseconds.
2062This value specifies an amount of time that normal timers may be deferred
2063in order to coalesce timers and avoid unnecessary wakeups.
2064
2065This allows a task's interactivity vs power consumption tradeoff to be
2066adjusted.
2067
2068Writing 0 to the file will set the task's timerslack to the default value.
2069
2070Valid values are from 0 - ULLONG_MAX
2071
2072An application setting the value must have PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_FSCREDS level
2073permissions on the task specified to change its timerslack_ns value.
2074
20753.11	/proc/<pid>/patch_state - Livepatch patch operation state
2076-----------------------------------------------------------------
2077When CONFIG_LIVEPATCH is enabled, this file displays the value of the
2078patch state for the task.
2079
2080A value of '-1' indicates that no patch is in transition.
2081
2082A value of '0' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is
2083unpatched.  If the patch is being enabled, then the task hasn't been
2084patched yet.  If the patch is being disabled, then the task has already
2085been unpatched.
2086
2087A value of '1' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is
2088patched.  If the patch is being enabled, then the task has already been
2089patched.  If the patch is being disabled, then the task hasn't been
2090unpatched yet.
2091
20923.12 /proc/<pid>/arch_status - task architecture specific status
2093-------------------------------------------------------------------
2094When CONFIG_PROC_PID_ARCH_STATUS is enabled, this file displays the
2095architecture specific status of the task.
2096
2097Example
2098~~~~~~~
2099
2100::
2101
2102 $ cat /proc/6753/arch_status
2103 AVX512_elapsed_ms:      8
2104
2105Description
2106~~~~~~~~~~~
2107
2108x86 specific entries
2109~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2110
2111AVX512_elapsed_ms
2112^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2113
2114  If AVX512 is supported on the machine, this entry shows the milliseconds
2115  elapsed since the last time AVX512 usage was recorded. The recording
2116  happens on a best effort basis when a task is scheduled out. This means
2117  that the value depends on two factors:
2118
2119    1) The time which the task spent on the CPU without being scheduled
2120       out. With CPU isolation and a single runnable task this can take
2121       several seconds.
2122
2123    2) The time since the task was scheduled out last. Depending on the
2124       reason for being scheduled out (time slice exhausted, syscall ...)
2125       this can be arbitrary long time.
2126
2127  As a consequence the value cannot be considered precise and authoritative
2128  information. The application which uses this information has to be aware
2129  of the overall scenario on the system in order to determine whether a
2130  task is a real AVX512 user or not. Precise information can be obtained
2131  with performance counters.
2132
2133  A special value of '-1' indicates that no AVX512 usage was recorded, thus
2134  the task is unlikely an AVX512 user, but depends on the workload and the
2135  scheduling scenario, it also could be a false negative mentioned above.
2136
2137Chapter 4: Configuring procfs
2138=============================
2139
21404.1	Mount options
2141---------------------
2142
2143The following mount options are supported:
2144
2145	=========	========================================================
2146	hidepid=	Set /proc/<pid>/ access mode.
2147	gid=		Set the group authorized to learn processes information.
2148	subset=		Show only the specified subset of procfs.
2149	=========	========================================================
2150
2151hidepid=off or hidepid=0 means classic mode - everybody may access all
2152/proc/<pid>/ directories (default).
2153
2154hidepid=noaccess or hidepid=1 means users may not access any /proc/<pid>/
2155directories but their own.  Sensitive files like cmdline, sched*, status are now
2156protected against other users.  This makes it impossible to learn whether any
2157user runs specific program (given the program doesn't reveal itself by its
2158behaviour).  As an additional bonus, as /proc/<pid>/cmdline is unaccessible for
2159other users, poorly written programs passing sensitive information via program
2160arguments are now protected against local eavesdroppers.
2161
2162hidepid=invisible or hidepid=2 means hidepid=1 plus all /proc/<pid>/ will be
2163fully invisible to other users.  It doesn't mean that it hides a fact whether a
2164process with a specific pid value exists (it can be learned by other means, e.g.
2165by "kill -0 $PID"), but it hides process' uid and gid, which may be learned by
2166stat()'ing /proc/<pid>/ otherwise.  It greatly complicates an intruder's task of
2167gathering information about running processes, whether some daemon runs with
2168elevated privileges, whether other user runs some sensitive program, whether
2169other users run any program at all, etc.
2170
2171hidepid=ptraceable or hidepid=4 means that procfs should only contain
2172/proc/<pid>/ directories that the caller can ptrace.
2173
2174gid= defines a group authorized to learn processes information otherwise
2175prohibited by hidepid=.  If you use some daemon like identd which needs to learn
2176information about processes information, just add identd to this group.
2177
2178subset=pid hides all top level files and directories in the procfs that
2179are not related to tasks.
2180
2181Chapter 5: Filesystem behavior
2182==============================
2183
2184Originally, before the advent of pid namepsace, procfs was a global file
2185system. It means that there was only one procfs instance in the system.
2186
2187When pid namespace was added, a separate procfs instance was mounted in
2188each pid namespace. So, procfs mount options are global among all
2189mountpoints within the same namespace::
2190
2191	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2192	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2193
2194	# strace -e mount mount -o hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2195	mount("proc", "/tmp/proc", "proc", 0, "hidepid=1") = 0
2196	+++ exited with 0 +++
2197
2198	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2199	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2200	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2201
2202and only after remounting procfs mount options will change at all
2203mountpoints::
2204
2205	# mount -o remount,hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2206
2207	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2208	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
2209	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
2210
2211This behavior is different from the behavior of other filesystems.
2212
2213The new procfs behavior is more like other filesystems. Each procfs mount
2214creates a new procfs instance. Mount options affect own procfs instance.
2215It means that it became possible to have several procfs instances
2216displaying tasks with different filtering options in one pid namespace::
2217
2218	# mount -o hidepid=invisible -t proc proc /proc
2219	# mount -o hidepid=noaccess -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2220	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2221	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=invisible 0 0
2222	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=noaccess 0 0
2223