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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       T H E  /proc   F I L E S Y S T E M
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/proc/sys         Terrehon Bowden <terrehon@pacbell.net>        October 7 1999
                  Bodo Bauer <bb@ricochet.net>

2.4.x update	  Jorge Nerin <comandante@zaralinux.com>      November 14 2000
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.3                                              Kernel version 2.2.12
					      Kernel version 2.4.0-test11-pre4
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table of Contents
-----------------

  0     Preface
  0.1	Introduction/Credits
  0.2	Legal Stuff

  1	Collecting System Information
  1.1	Process-Specific Subdirectories
  1.2	Kernel data
  1.3	IDE devices in /proc/ide
  1.4	Networking info in /proc/net
  1.5	SCSI info
  1.6	Parallel port info in /proc/parport
  1.7	TTY info in /proc/tty
  1.8	Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat

  2	Modifying System Parameters
  2.1	/proc/sys/fs - File system data
  2.2	/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
  2.3	/proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
  2.4	/proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem
  2.5	/proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
  2.6	/proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
  2.7	/proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
  2.8	/proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
  2.9	Appletalk
  2.10	IPX
  2.11	/proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
  2.12	/proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score
  2.13	/proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
  2.14	/proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
  2.15	/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preface
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0.1 Introduction/Credits
------------------------

This documentation is  part of a soon (or  so we hope) to be  released book on
the SuSE  Linux distribution. As  there is  no complete documentation  for the
/proc file system and we've used  many freely available sources to write these
chapters, it  seems only fair  to give the work  back to the  Linux community.
This work is  based on the 2.2.*  kernel version and the  upcoming 2.4.*. I'm
afraid it's still far from complete, but we  hope it will be useful. As far as
we know, it is the first 'all-in-one' document about the /proc file system. It
is focused  on the Intel  x86 hardware,  so if you  are looking for  PPC, ARM,
SPARC, AXP, etc., features, you probably  won't find what you are looking for.
It also only covers IPv4 networking, not IPv6 nor other protocols - sorry. But
additions and patches  are welcome and will  be added to this  document if you
mail them to Bodo.

We'd like  to  thank Alan Cox, Rik van Riel, and Alexey Kuznetsov and a lot of
other people for help compiling this documentation. We'd also like to extend a
special thank  you to Andi Kleen for documentation, which we relied on heavily
to create  this  document,  as well as the additional information he provided.
Thanks to  everybody  else  who contributed source or docs to the Linux kernel
and helped create a great piece of software... :)

If you  have  any comments, corrections or additions, please don't hesitate to
contact Bodo  Bauer  at  bb@ricochet.net.  We'll  be happy to add them to this
document.

The   latest   version    of   this   document   is    available   online   at
http://skaro.nightcrawler.com/~bb/Docs/Proc as HTML version.

If  the above  direction does  not works  for you,  ypu could  try the  kernel
mailing  list  at  linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org  and/or try  to  reach  me  at
comandante@zaralinux.com.

0.2 Legal Stuff
---------------

We don't  guarantee  the  correctness  of this document, and if you come to us
complaining about  how  you  screwed  up  your  system  because  of  incorrect
documentation, we won't feel responsible...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER 1: COLLECTING SYSTEM INFORMATION
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In This Chapter
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Investigating  the  properties  of  the  pseudo  file  system  /proc and its
  ability to provide information on the running Linux system
* Examining /proc's structure
* Uncovering  various  information  about the kernel and the processes running
  on the system
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The proc  file  system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the
kernel. It  can  be  used to obtain information about the system and to change
certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).

First, we'll  take  a  look  at the read-only parts of /proc. In Chapter 2, we
show you how you can use /proc/sys to change settings.

1.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
-----------------------------------

The directory  /proc  contains  (among other things) one subdirectory for each
process running on the system, which is named after the process ID (PID).

The link  self  points  to  the  process reading the file system. Each process
subdirectory has the entries listed in Table 1-1.


Table 1-1: Process specific entries in /proc 
..............................................................................
 File		Content
 clear_refs	Clears page referenced bits shown in smaps output
 cmdline	Command line arguments
 cpu		Current and last cpu in which it was executed	(2.4)(smp)
 cwd		Link to the current working directory
 environ	Values of environment variables
 exe		Link to the executable of this process
 fd		Directory, which contains all file descriptors
 maps		Memory maps to executables and library files	(2.4)
 mem		Memory held by this process
 root		Link to the root directory of this process
 stat		Process status
 statm		Process memory status information
 status		Process status in human readable form
 wchan		If CONFIG_KALLSYMS is set, a pre-decoded wchan
 smaps		Extension based on maps, the rss size for each mapped file
..............................................................................

For example, to get the status information of a process, all you have to do is
read the file /proc/PID/status:

  >cat /proc/self/status 
  Name:   cat 
  State:  R (running) 
  Pid:    5452 
  PPid:   743 
  TracerPid:      0						(2.4)
  Uid:    501     501     501     501 
  Gid:    100     100     100     100 
  Groups: 100 14 16 
  VmSize:     1112 kB 
  VmLck:         0 kB 
  VmRSS:       348 kB 
  VmData:       24 kB 
  VmStk:        12 kB 
  VmExe:         8 kB 
  VmLib:      1044 kB 
  SigPnd: 0000000000000000 
  SigBlk: 0000000000000000 
  SigIgn: 0000000000000000 
  SigCgt: 0000000000000000 
  CapInh: 00000000fffffeff 
  CapPrm: 0000000000000000 
  CapEff: 0000000000000000 


This shows you nearly the same information you would get if you viewed it with
the ps  command.  In  fact,  ps  uses  the  proc  file  system  to  obtain its
information. The  statm  file  contains  more  detailed  information about the
process memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-2.  The stat
file contains details information about the process itself.  Its fields are
explained in Table 1-3.


Table 1-2: Contents of the statm files (as of 2.6.8-rc3)
..............................................................................
 Field    Content
 size     total program size (pages)		(same as VmSize in status)
 resident size of memory portions (pages)	(same as VmRSS in status)
 shared   number of pages that are shared	(i.e. backed by a file)
 trs      number of pages that are 'code'	(not including libs; broken,
							includes data segment)
 lrs      number of pages of library		(always 0 on 2.6)
 drs      number of pages of data/stack		(including libs; broken,
							includes library text)
 dt       number of dirty pages			(always 0 on 2.6)
..............................................................................


Table 1-3: Contents of the stat files (as of 2.6.22-rc3)
..............................................................................
 Field          Content
  pid           process id
  tcomm         filename of the executable
  state         state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an
                uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped)
  ppid          process id of the parent process
  pgrp          pgrp of the process
  sid           session id
  tty_nr        tty the process uses
  tty_pgrp      pgrp of the tty
  flags         task flags
  min_flt       number of minor faults
  cmin_flt      number of minor faults with child's
  maj_flt       number of major faults
  cmaj_flt      number of major faults with child's
  utime         user mode jiffies
  stime         kernel mode jiffies
  cutime        user mode jiffies with child's
  cstime        kernel mode jiffies with child's
  priority      priority level
  nice          nice level
  num_threads   number of threads
  it_real_value	(obsolete, always 0)
  start_time    time the process started after system boot
  vsize         virtual memory size
  rss           resident set memory size
  rsslim        current limit in bytes on the rss
  start_code    address above which program text can run
  end_code      address below which program text can run
  start_stack   address of the start of the stack
  esp           current value of ESP
  eip           current value of EIP
  pending       bitmap of pending signals (obsolete)
  blocked       bitmap of blocked signals (obsolete)
  sigign        bitmap of ignored signals (obsolete)
  sigcatch      bitmap of catched signals (obsolete)
  wchan         address where process went to sleep
  0             (place holder)
  0             (place holder)
  exit_signal   signal to send to parent thread on exit
  task_cpu      which CPU the task is scheduled on
  rt_priority   realtime priority
  policy        scheduling policy (man sched_setscheduler)
  blkio_ticks   time spent waiting for block IO
..............................................................................


1.2 Kernel data
---------------

Similar to  the  process entries, the kernel data files give information about
the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in
/proc and  are  listed  in Table 1-4. Not all of these will be present in your
system. It  depends  on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which
files are there, and which are missing.

Table 1-4: Kernel info in /proc
..............................................................................
 File        Content                                           
 apm         Advanced power management info                    
 buddyinfo   Kernel memory allocator information (see text)	(2.5)
 bus         Directory containing bus specific information     
 cmdline     Kernel command line                               
 cpuinfo     Info about the CPU                                
 devices     Available devices (block and character)           
 dma         Used DMS channels                                 
 filesystems Supported filesystems                             
 driver	     Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc (2.4)
 execdomains Execdomains, related to security			(2.4)
 fb	     Frame Buffer devices				(2.4)
 fs	     File system parameters, currently nfs/exports	(2.4)
 ide         Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem 
 interrupts  Interrupt usage                                   
 iomem	     Memory map						(2.4)
 ioports     I/O port usage                                    
 irq	     Masks for irq to cpu affinity			(2.4)(smp?)
 isapnp	     ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info				(2.4)
 kcore       Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4))   
 kmsg        Kernel messages                                   
 ksyms       Kernel symbol table                               
 loadavg     Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes                
 locks       Kernel locks                                      
 meminfo     Memory info                                       
 misc        Miscellaneous                                     
 modules     List of loaded modules                            
 mounts      Mounted filesystems                               
 net         Networking info (see text)                        
 partitions  Table of partitions known to the system           
 pci	     Deprecated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/,
             decoupled by lspci					(2.4)
 rtc         Real time clock                                   
 scsi        SCSI info (see text)                              
 slabinfo    Slab pool info                                    
 stat        Overall statistics                                
 swaps       Swap space utilization                            
 sys         See chapter 2                                     
 sysvipc     Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm)		(2.4)
 tty	     Info of tty drivers
 uptime      System uptime                                     
 version     Kernel version                                    
 video	     bttv info of video resources			(2.4)
..............................................................................

You can,  for  example,  check  which interrupts are currently in use and what
they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts:

  > cat /proc/interrupts 
             CPU0        
    0:    8728810          XT-PIC  timer 
    1:        895          XT-PIC  keyboard 
    2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade 
    3:     531695          XT-PIC  aha152x 
    4:    2014133          XT-PIC  serial 
    5:      44401          XT-PIC  pcnet_cs 
    8:          2          XT-PIC  rtc 
   11:          8          XT-PIC  i82365 
   12:     182918          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse 
   13:          1          XT-PIC  fpu 
   14:    1232265          XT-PIC  ide0 
   15:          7          XT-PIC  ide1 
  NMI:          0 

In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the
output of a SMP machine):

  > cat /proc/interrupts 

             CPU0       CPU1       
    0:    1243498    1214548    IO-APIC-edge  timer
    1:       8949       8958    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
    2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
    5:      11286      10161    IO-APIC-edge  soundblaster
    8:          1          0    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
    9:      27422      27407    IO-APIC-edge  3c503
   12:     113645     113873    IO-APIC-edge  PS/2 Mouse
   13:          0          0          XT-PIC  fpu
   14:      22491      24012    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
   15:       2183       2415    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
   17:      30564      30414   IO-APIC-level  eth0
   18:        177        164   IO-APIC-level  bttv
  NMI:    2457961    2457959 
  LOC:    2457882    2457881 
  ERR:       2155

NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI
(Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.

LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.

ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that
connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected,
the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big
problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.

In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again.  This time the goal was for
/proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not
just those considered 'most important'.  The new vectors are:

  THR -- interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter
  (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds
  a configurable threshold.  Only available on some systems.

  TRM -- a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold
  has been exceeded for the CPU.  This interrupt may also be generated
  when the temperature drops back to normal.

  SPU -- a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered
  by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC.  Hence
  the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from.
  For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector
  of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.

  RES, CAL, TLB -- rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are
  sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS.  Typically,
  their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to
  determine the occurance of interrupt of the given type.

The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevent.  For example,
the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms.  Others are
suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor.  As of this writing, only
i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.

Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4.
It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity, this means that you can "hook" an
IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the
irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and one file; prof_cpu_mask

For example 
  > ls /proc/irq/
  0  10  12  14  16  18  2  4  6  8  prof_cpu_mask
  1  11  13  15  17  19  3  5  7  9
  > ls /proc/irq/0/
  smp_affinity

The contents of the prof_cpu_mask file and each smp_affinity file for each IRQ
is the same by default:

  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity 
  ffffffff

It's a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the IRQ, you can
set it by doing:

  > echo 1 > /proc/irq/prof_cpu_mask

This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo 5
which means that only the first and fourth CPU can handle the IRQ.

The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin
between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has
more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the
best choice for almost everyone.

There are  three  more  important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys.
The general  rule  is  that  the  contents,  or  even  the  existence of these
directories, depend  on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the
directory scsi  may  not  exist. The same is true with the net, which is there
only when networking support is present in the running kernel.

The slabinfo  file  gives  information  about  memory usage at the slab level.
Linux uses  slab  pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2.
Commonly used  objects  have  their  own  slab  pool (such as network buffers,
directory cache, and so on).

..............................................................................

> cat /proc/buddyinfo

Node 0, zone      DMA      0      4      5      4      4      3 ...
Node 0, zone   Normal      1      0      0      1    101      8 ...
Node 0, zone  HighMem      2      0      0      1      1      0 ...

Memory fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a 
useful tool for helping diagnose these problems.  Buddyinfo will give you a 
clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous
allocation failed.

Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are 
available.  In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in 
ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE 
available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc... 

..............................................................................

meminfo:

Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory.  This
varies by architecture and compile options.  The following is from a
16GB PIII, which has highmem enabled.  You may not have all of these fields.

> cat /proc/meminfo


MemTotal:     16344972 kB
MemFree:      13634064 kB
Buffers:          3656 kB
Cached:        1195708 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:         891636 kB
Inactive:      1077224 kB
HighTotal:    15597528 kB
HighFree:     13629632 kB
LowTotal:       747444 kB
LowFree:          4432 kB
SwapTotal:           0 kB
SwapFree:            0 kB
Dirty:             968 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
Mapped:         280372 kB
Slab:           684068 kB
CommitLimit:   7669796 kB
Committed_AS:   100056 kB
PageTables:      24448 kB
VmallocTotal:   112216 kB
VmallocUsed:       428 kB
VmallocChunk:   111088 kB

    MemTotal: Total usable ram (i.e. physical ram minus a few reserved
              bits and the kernel binary code)
     MemFree: The sum of LowFree+HighFree
     Buffers: Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
              shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
      Cached: in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
              pagecache).  Doesn't include SwapCached
  SwapCached: Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but
              still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it
              doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already
              in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
      Active: Memory that has been used more recently and usually not
              reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
    Inactive: Memory which has been less recently used.  It is more
              eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
   HighTotal:
    HighFree: Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory
              Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or
              for the pagecache.  The kernel must use tricks to access
              this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
    LowTotal:
     LowFree: Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that
              highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the
              kernel's use for its own data structures.  Among many
              other things, it is where everything from the Slab is
              allocated.  Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
   SwapTotal: total amount of swap space available
    SwapFree: Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily
              on the disk
       Dirty: Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
   Writeback: Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
      Mapped: files which have been mmaped, such as libraries
        Slab: in-kernel data structures cache
 CommitLimit: Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'),
              this is the total amount of  memory currently available to
              be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to
              if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in
              'vm.overcommit_memory').
              The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula:
              CommitLimit = ('vm.overcommit_ratio' * Physical RAM) + Swap
              For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G
              of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would
              yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
              For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation
              in vm/overcommit-accounting.
Committed_AS: The amount of memory presently allocated on the system.
              The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which
              has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been
              "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G
              of memory, but only touches 300M of it will only show up
              as using 300M of memory even if it has the address space
              allocated for the entire 1G. This 1G is memory which has
              been "committed" to by the VM and can be used at any time
              by the allocating application. With strict overcommit
              enabled on the system (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'),
              allocations which would exceed the CommitLimit (detailed
              above) will not be permitted. This is useful if one needs
              to guarantee that processes will not fail due to lack of
              memory once that memory has been successfully allocated.
  PageTables: amount of memory dedicated to the lowest level of page
              tables.
VmallocTotal: total size of vmalloc memory area
 VmallocUsed: amount of vmalloc area which is used
VmallocChunk: largest contigious block of vmalloc area which is free


1.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
----------------------------

The subdirectory /proc/ide contains information about all IDE devices of which
the kernel  is  aware.  There is one subdirectory for each IDE controller, the
file drivers  and a link for each IDE device, pointing to the device directory
in the controller specific subtree.

The file  drivers  contains general information about the drivers used for the
IDE devices:

  > cat /proc/ide/drivers
  ide-cdrom version 4.53
  ide-disk version 1.08

More detailed  information  can  be  found  in  the  controller  specific
subdirectories. These  are  named  ide0,  ide1  and  so  on.  Each  of  these
directories contains the files shown in table 1-5.


Table 1-5: IDE controller info in  /proc/ide/ide?
..............................................................................
 File    Content                                 
 channel IDE channel (0 or 1)                    
 config  Configuration (only for PCI/IDE bridge) 
 mate    Mate name                               
 model   Type/Chipset of IDE controller          
..............................................................................

Each device  connected  to  a  controller  has  a separate subdirectory in the
controllers directory.  The  files  listed in table 1-6 are contained in these
directories.


Table 1-6: IDE device information
..............................................................................
 File             Content                                    
 cache            The cache                                  
 capacity         Capacity of the medium (in 512Byte blocks) 
 driver           driver and version                         
 geometry         physical and logical geometry              
 identify         device identify block                      
 media            media type                                 
 model            device identifier