xref: /linux/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst (revision 7203ca412fc8e8a0588e9adc0f777d3163f8dff3)
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  3.13  /proc/<pid>/fd - List of symlinks to open files
51  3.14  /proc/<pid/ksm_stat - Information about the process's ksm status.
52
53  4	Configuring procfs
54  4.1	Mount options
55
56  5	Filesystem behavior
57
58Preface
59=======
60
610.1 Introduction/Credits
62------------------------
63
64We'd like  to  thank Alan Cox, Rik van Riel, and Alexey Kuznetsov and a lot of
65other people for help compiling this documentation. We'd also like to extend a
66special thank  you to Andi Kleen for documentation, which we relied on heavily
67to create  this  document,  as well as the additional information he provided.
68Thanks to  everybody  else  who contributed source or docs to the Linux kernel
69and helped create a great piece of software... :)
70
71The   latest   version    of   this   document   is    available   online   at
72https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/proc.html
73
740.2 Legal Stuff
75---------------
76
77We don't  guarantee  the  correctness  of this document, and if you come to us
78complaining about  how  you  screwed  up  your  system  because  of  incorrect
79documentation, we won't feel responsible...
80
81Chapter 1: Collecting System Information
82========================================
83
84In This Chapter
85---------------
86* Investigating  the  properties  of  the  pseudo  file  system  /proc and its
87  ability to provide information on the running Linux system
88* Examining /proc's structure
89* Uncovering  various  information  about the kernel and the processes running
90  on the system
91
92------------------------------------------------------------------------------
93
94The proc  file  system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the
95kernel. It  can  be  used to obtain information about the system and to change
96certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).
97
98First, we'll  take  a  look  at the read-only parts of /proc. In Chapter 2, we
99show you how you can use /proc/sys to change settings.
100
1011.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
102-----------------------------------
103
104The directory  /proc  contains  (among other things) one subdirectory for each
105process running on the system, which is named after the process ID (PID).
106
107The link  'self'  points to  the process reading the file system. Each process
108subdirectory has the entries listed in Table 1-1.
109
110A process can read its own information from /proc/PID/* with no extra
111permissions. When reading /proc/PID/* information for other processes, reading
112process is required to have either CAP_SYS_PTRACE capability with
113PTRACE_MODE_READ access permissions, or, alternatively, CAP_PERFMON
114capability. This applies to all read-only information like `maps`, `environ`,
115`pagemap`, etc. The only exception is `mem` file due to its read-write nature,
116which requires CAP_SYS_PTRACE capabilities with more elevated
117PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH permissions; CAP_PERFMON capability does not grant access
118to /proc/PID/mem for other processes.
119
120Note that an open file descriptor to /proc/<pid> or to any of its
121contained files or subdirectories does not prevent <pid> being reused
122for some other process in the event that <pid> exits. Operations on
123open /proc/<pid> file descriptors corresponding to dead processes
124never act on any new process that the kernel may, through chance, have
125also assigned the process ID <pid>. Instead, operations on these FDs
126usually fail with ESRCH.
127
128.. table:: Table 1-1: Process specific entries in /proc
129
130 =============  ===============================================================
131 File		Content
132 =============  ===============================================================
133 clear_refs	Clears page referenced bits shown in smaps output
134 cmdline	Command line arguments
135 cpu		Current and last cpu in which it was executed	(2.4)(smp)
136 cwd		Link to the current working directory
137 environ	Values of environment variables
138 exe		Link to the executable of this process
139 fd		Directory, which contains all file descriptors
140 maps		Memory maps to executables and library files	(2.4)
141 mem		Memory held by this process
142 root		Link to the root directory of this process
143 stat		Process status
144 statm		Process memory status information
145 status		Process status in human readable form
146 wchan		Present with CONFIG_KALLSYMS=y: it shows the kernel function
147		symbol the task is blocked in - or "0" if not blocked.
148 pagemap	Page table
149 stack		Report full stack trace, enable via CONFIG_STACKTRACE
150 smaps		An extension based on maps, showing the memory consumption of
151		each mapping and flags associated with it
152 smaps_rollup	Accumulated smaps stats for all mappings of the process.  This
153		can be derived from smaps, but is faster and more convenient
154 numa_maps	An extension based on maps, showing the memory locality and
155		binding policy as well as mem usage (in pages) of each mapping.
156 =============  ===============================================================
157
158For example, to get the status information of a process, all you have to do is
159read the file /proc/PID/status::
160
161  >cat /proc/self/status
162  Name:   cat
163  State:  R (running)
164  Tgid:   5452
165  Pid:    5452
166  PPid:   743
167  TracerPid:      0						(2.4)
168  Uid:    501     501     501     501
169  Gid:    100     100     100     100
170  FDSize: 256
171  Groups: 100 14 16
172  Kthread:    0
173  VmPeak:     5004 kB
174  VmSize:     5004 kB
175  VmLck:         0 kB
176  VmHWM:       476 kB
177  VmRSS:       476 kB
178  RssAnon:             352 kB
179  RssFile:             120 kB
180  RssShmem:              4 kB
181  VmData:      156 kB
182  VmStk:        88 kB
183  VmExe:        68 kB
184  VmLib:      1412 kB
185  VmPTE:        20 kb
186  VmSwap:        0 kB
187  HugetlbPages:          0 kB
188  CoreDumping:    0
189  THP_enabled:	  1
190  Threads:        1
191  SigQ:   0/28578
192  SigPnd: 0000000000000000
193  ShdPnd: 0000000000000000
194  SigBlk: 0000000000000000
195  SigIgn: 0000000000000000
196  SigCgt: 0000000000000000
197  CapInh: 00000000fffffeff
198  CapPrm: 0000000000000000
199  CapEff: 0000000000000000
200  CapBnd: ffffffffffffffff
201  CapAmb: 0000000000000000
202  NoNewPrivs:     0
203  Seccomp:        0
204  Speculation_Store_Bypass:       thread vulnerable
205  SpeculationIndirectBranch:      conditional enabled
206  voluntary_ctxt_switches:        0
207  nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches:     1
208
209This shows you nearly the same information you would get if you viewed it with
210the ps  command.  In  fact,  ps  uses  the  proc  file  system  to  obtain its
211information.  But you get a more detailed  view of the  process by reading the
212file /proc/PID/status. It fields are described in table 1-2.
213
214The  statm  file  contains  more  detailed  information about the process
215memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-3.  The stat file
216contains detailed information about the process itself.  Its fields are
217explained in Table 1-4.
218
219(for SMP CONFIG users)
220
221For making accounting scalable, RSS related information are handled in an
222asynchronous manner and the value may not be very precise. To see a precise
223snapshot of a moment, you can see /proc/<pid>/smaps file and scan page table.
224It's slow but very precise.
225
226.. table:: Table 1-2: Contents of the status fields (as of 4.19)
227
228 ==========================  ===================================================
229 Field                       Content
230 ==========================  ===================================================
231 Name                        filename of the executable
232 Umask                       file mode creation mask
233 State                       state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping
234                             in an uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie,
235			     T is traced or stopped)
236 Tgid                        thread group ID
237 Ngid                        NUMA group ID (0 if none)
238 Pid                         process id
239 PPid                        process id of the parent process
240 TracerPid                   PID of process tracing this process (0 if not, or
241                             the tracer is outside of the current pid namespace)
242 Uid                         Real, effective, saved set, and  file system UIDs
243 Gid                         Real, effective, saved set, and  file system GIDs
244 FDSize                      number of file descriptor slots currently allocated
245 Groups                      supplementary group list
246 NStgid                      descendant namespace thread group ID hierarchy
247 NSpid                       descendant namespace process ID hierarchy
248 NSpgid                      descendant namespace process group ID hierarchy
249 NSsid                       descendant namespace session ID hierarchy
250 Kthread                     kernel thread flag, 1 is yes, 0 is no
251 VmPeak                      peak virtual memory size
252 VmSize                      total program size
253 VmLck                       locked memory size
254 VmPin                       pinned memory size
255 VmHWM                       peak resident set size ("high water mark")
256 VmRSS                       size of memory portions. It contains the three
257                             following parts
258                             (VmRSS = RssAnon + RssFile + RssShmem)
259 RssAnon                     size of resident anonymous memory
260 RssFile                     size of resident file mappings
261 RssShmem                    size of resident shmem memory (includes SysV shm,
262                             mapping of tmpfs and shared anonymous mappings)
263 VmData                      size of private data segments
264 VmStk                       size of stack segments
265 VmExe                       size of text segment
266 VmLib                       size of shared library code
267 VmPTE                       size of page table entries
268 VmSwap                      amount of swap used by anonymous private data
269                             (shmem swap usage is not included)
270 HugetlbPages                size of hugetlb memory portions
271 CoreDumping                 process's memory is currently being dumped
272                             (killing the process may lead to a corrupted core)
273 THP_enabled                 process is allowed to use THP (returns 0 when
274                             PR_SET_THP_DISABLE is set on the process to disable
275                             THP completely, not just partially)
276 Threads                     number of threads
277 SigQ                        number of signals queued/max. number for queue
278 SigPnd                      bitmap of pending signals for the thread
279 ShdPnd                      bitmap of shared pending signals for the process
280 SigBlk                      bitmap of blocked signals
281 SigIgn                      bitmap of ignored signals
282 SigCgt                      bitmap of caught signals
283 CapInh                      bitmap of inheritable capabilities
284 CapPrm                      bitmap of permitted capabilities
285 CapEff                      bitmap of effective capabilities
286 CapBnd                      bitmap of capabilities bounding set
287 CapAmb                      bitmap of ambient capabilities
288 NoNewPrivs                  no_new_privs, like prctl(PR_GET_NO_NEW_PRIV, ...)
289 Seccomp                     seccomp mode, like prctl(PR_GET_SECCOMP, ...)
290 Speculation_Store_Bypass    speculative store bypass mitigation status
291 SpeculationIndirectBranch   indirect branch speculation mode
292 Cpus_allowed                mask of CPUs on which this process may run
293 Cpus_allowed_list           Same as previous, but in "list format"
294 Mems_allowed                mask of memory nodes allowed to this process
295 Mems_allowed_list           Same as previous, but in "list format"
296 voluntary_ctxt_switches     number of voluntary context switches
297 nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches  number of non voluntary context switches
298 ==========================  ===================================================
299
300
301.. table:: Table 1-3: Contents of the statm fields (as of 2.6.8-rc3)
302
303 ======== ===============================	==============================
304 Field    Content
305 ======== ===============================	==============================
306 size     total program size (pages)		(same as VmSize in status)
307 resident size of memory portions (pages)	(same as VmRSS in status)
308 shared   number of pages that are shared	(i.e. backed by a file, same
309						as RssFile+RssShmem in status)
310 trs      number of pages that are 'code'	(not including libs; broken,
311						includes data segment)
312 lrs      number of pages of library		(always 0 on 2.6)
313 drs      number of pages of data/stack		(including libs; broken,
314						includes library text)
315 dt       number of dirty pages			(always 0 on 2.6)
316 ======== ===============================	==============================
317
318
319.. table:: Table 1-4: Contents of the stat fields (as of 2.6.30-rc7)
320
321  ============= ===============================================================
322  Field         Content
323  ============= ===============================================================
324  pid           process id
325  tcomm         filename of the executable
326  state         state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an
327                uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped)
328  ppid          process id of the parent process
329  pgrp          pgrp of the process
330  sid           session id
331  tty_nr        tty the process uses
332  tty_pgrp      pgrp of the tty
333  flags         task flags
334  min_flt       number of minor faults
335  cmin_flt      number of minor faults with child's
336  maj_flt       number of major faults
337  cmaj_flt      number of major faults with child's
338  utime         user mode jiffies
339  stime         kernel mode jiffies
340  cutime        user mode jiffies with child's
341  cstime        kernel mode jiffies with child's
342  priority      priority level
343  nice          nice level
344  num_threads   number of threads
345  it_real_value	(obsolete, always 0)
346  start_time    time the process started after system boot
347  vsize         virtual memory size
348  rss           resident set memory size
349  rsslim        current limit in bytes on the rss
350  start_code    address above which program text can run
351  end_code      address below which program text can run
352  start_stack   address of the start of the main process stack
353  esp           current value of ESP
354  eip           current value of EIP
355  pending       bitmap of pending signals
356  blocked       bitmap of blocked signals
357  sigign        bitmap of ignored signals
358  sigcatch      bitmap of caught signals
359  0		(place holder, used to be the wchan address,
360		use /proc/PID/wchan instead)
361  0             (place holder)
362  0             (place holder)
363  exit_signal   signal to send to parent thread on exit
364  task_cpu      which CPU the task is scheduled on
365  rt_priority   realtime priority
366  policy        scheduling policy (man sched_setscheduler)
367  blkio_ticks   time spent waiting for block IO
368  gtime         guest time of the task in jiffies
369  cgtime        guest time of the task children in jiffies
370  start_data    address above which program data+bss is placed
371  end_data      address below which program data+bss is placed
372  start_brk     address above which program heap can be expanded with brk()
373  arg_start     address above which program command line is placed
374  arg_end       address below which program command line is placed
375  env_start     address above which program environment is placed
376  env_end       address below which program environment is placed
377  exit_code     the thread's exit_code in the form reported by the waitpid
378		system call
379  ============= ===============================================================
380
381The /proc/PID/maps file contains the currently mapped memory regions and
382their access permissions.
383
384The format is::
385
386    address           perms offset  dev   inode      pathname
387
388    08048000-08049000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8312       /opt/test
389    08049000-0804a000 rw-p 00001000 03:00 8312       /opt/test
390    0804a000-0806b000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [heap]
391    a7cb1000-a7cb2000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0
392    a7cb2000-a7eb2000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
393    a7eb2000-a7eb3000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0
394    a7eb3000-a7ed5000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
395    a7ed5000-a8008000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
396    a8008000-a800a000 r--p 00133000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
397    a800a000-a800b000 rw-p 00135000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
398    a800b000-a800e000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
399    a800e000-a8022000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
400    a8022000-a8023000 r--p 00013000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
401    a8023000-a8024000 rw-p 00014000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
402    a8024000-a8027000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
403    a8027000-a8043000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
404    a8043000-a8044000 r--p 0001b000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
405    a8044000-a8045000 rw-p 0001c000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
406    aff35000-aff4a000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [stack]
407    ffffe000-fffff000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [vdso]
408
409where "address" is the address space in the process that it occupies, "perms"
410is a set of permissions::
411
412 r = read
413 w = write
414 x = execute
415 s = shared
416 p = private (copy on write)
417
418"offset" is the offset into the mapping, "dev" is the device (major:minor), and
419"inode" is the inode  on that device.  0 indicates that  no inode is associated
420with the memory region, as the case would be with BSS (uninitialized data).
421The "pathname" shows the name associated file for this mapping.  If the mapping
422is not associated with a file:
423
424 ===================        ===========================================
425 [heap]                     the heap of the program
426 [stack]                    the stack of the main process
427 [vdso]                     the "virtual dynamic shared object",
428                            the kernel system call handler
429 [anon:<name>]              a private anonymous mapping that has been
430                            named by userspace
431 [anon_shmem:<name>]        an anonymous shared memory mapping that has
432                            been named by userspace
433 ===================        ===========================================
434
435 or if empty, the mapping is anonymous.
436
437Starting with 6.11 kernel, /proc/PID/maps provides an alternative
438ioctl()-based API that gives ability to flexibly and efficiently query and
439filter individual VMAs. This interface is binary and is meant for more
440efficient and easy programmatic use. `struct procmap_query`, defined in
441linux/fs.h UAPI header, serves as an input/output argument to the
442`PROCMAP_QUERY` ioctl() command. See comments in linus/fs.h UAPI header for
443details on query semantics, supported flags, data returned, and general API
444usage information.
445
446The /proc/PID/smaps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory
447consumption for each of the process's mappings. For each mapping (aka Virtual
448Memory Area, or VMA) there is a series of lines such as the following::
449
450    08048000-080bc000 r-xp 00000000 03:02 13130      /bin/bash
451
452    Size:               1084 kB
453    KernelPageSize:        4 kB
454    MMUPageSize:           4 kB
455    Rss:                 892 kB
456    Pss:                 374 kB
457    Pss_Dirty:             0 kB
458    Shared_Clean:        892 kB
459    Shared_Dirty:          0 kB
460    Private_Clean:         0 kB
461    Private_Dirty:         0 kB
462    Referenced:          892 kB
463    Anonymous:             0 kB
464    KSM:                   0 kB
465    LazyFree:              0 kB
466    AnonHugePages:         0 kB
467    ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
468    Shared_Hugetlb:        0 kB
469    Private_Hugetlb:       0 kB
470    Swap:                  0 kB
471    SwapPss:               0 kB
472    KernelPageSize:        4 kB
473    MMUPageSize:           4 kB
474    Locked:                0 kB
475    THPeligible:           0
476    VmFlags: rd ex mr mw me dw
477
478The first of these lines shows the same information as is displayed for
479the mapping in /proc/PID/maps.  Following lines show the size of the
480mapping (size); the size of each page allocated when backing a VMA
481(KernelPageSize), which is usually the same as the size in the page table
482entries; the page size used by the MMU when backing a VMA (in most cases,
483the same as KernelPageSize); the amount of the mapping that is currently
484resident in RAM (RSS); the process's proportional share of this mapping
485(PSS); and the number of clean and dirty shared and private pages in the
486mapping.
487
488The "proportional set size" (PSS) of a process is the count of pages it has
489in memory, where each page is divided by the number of processes sharing it.
490So if a process has 1000 pages all to itself, and 1000 shared with one other
491process, its PSS will be 1500.  "Pss_Dirty" is the portion of PSS which
492consists of dirty pages.  ("Pss_Clean" is not included, but it can be
493calculated by subtracting "Pss_Dirty" from "Pss".)
494
495Traditionally, a page is accounted as "private" if it is mapped exactly once,
496and a page is accounted as "shared" when mapped multiple times, even when
497mapped in the same process multiple times. Note that this accounting is
498independent of MAP_SHARED.
499
500In some kernel configurations, the semantics of pages part of a larger
501allocation (e.g., THP) can differ: a page is accounted as "private" if all
502pages part of the corresponding large allocation are *certainly* mapped in the
503same process, even if the page is mapped multiple times in that process. A
504page is accounted as "shared" if any page page of the larger allocation
505is *maybe* mapped in a different process. In some cases, a large allocation
506might be treated as "maybe mapped by multiple processes" even though this
507is no longer the case.
508
509Some kernel configurations do not track the precise number of times a page part
510of a larger allocation is mapped. In this case, when calculating the PSS, the
511average number of mappings per page in this larger allocation might be used
512as an approximation for the number of mappings of a page. The PSS calculation
513will be imprecise in this case.
514
515"Referenced" indicates the amount of memory currently marked as referenced or
516accessed.
517
518"Anonymous" shows the amount of memory that does not belong to any file.  Even
519a mapping associated with a file may contain anonymous pages: when MAP_PRIVATE
520and a page is modified, the file page is replaced by a private anonymous copy.
521
522"KSM" reports how many of the pages are KSM pages. Note that KSM-placed zeropages
523are not included, only actual KSM pages.
524
525"LazyFree" shows the amount of memory which is marked by madvise(MADV_FREE).
526The memory isn't freed immediately with madvise(). It's freed in memory
527pressure if the memory is clean. Please note that the printed value might
528be lower than the real value due to optimizations used in the current
529implementation. If this is not desirable please file a bug report.
530
531"AnonHugePages" shows the amount of memory backed by transparent hugepage.
532
533"ShmemPmdMapped" shows the amount of shared (shmem/tmpfs) memory backed by
534huge pages.
535
536"Shared_Hugetlb" and "Private_Hugetlb" show the amounts of memory backed by
537hugetlbfs page which is *not* counted in "RSS" or "PSS" field for historical
538reasons. And these are not included in {Shared,Private}_{Clean,Dirty} field.
539
540"Swap" shows how much would-be-anonymous memory is also used, but out on swap.
541
542For shmem mappings, "Swap" includes also the size of the mapped (and not
543replaced by copy-on-write) part of the underlying shmem object out on swap.
544"SwapPss" shows proportional swap share of this mapping. Unlike "Swap", this
545does not take into account swapped out page of underlying shmem objects.
546"Locked" indicates whether the mapping is locked in memory or not.
547
548"THPeligible" indicates whether the mapping is eligible for allocating
549naturally aligned THP pages of any currently enabled size. 1 if true, 0
550otherwise.
551
552"VmFlags" field deserves a separate description. This member represents the
553kernel flags associated with the particular virtual memory area in two letter
554encoded manner. The codes are the following:
555
556    ==    =============================================================
557    rd    readable
558    wr    writeable
559    ex    executable
560    sh    shared
561    mr    may read
562    mw    may write
563    me    may execute
564    ms    may share
565    gd    stack segment growns down
566    pf    pure PFN range
567    lo    pages are locked in memory
568    io    memory mapped I/O area
569    sr    sequential read advise provided
570    rr    random read advise provided
571    dc    do not copy area on fork
572    de    do not expand area on remapping
573    ac    area is accountable
574    nr    swap space is not reserved for the area
575    ht    area uses huge tlb pages
576    sf    synchronous page fault
577    ar    architecture specific flag
578    wf    wipe on fork
579    dd    do not include area into core dump
580    sd    soft dirty flag
581    mm    mixed map area
582    hg    huge page advise flag
583    nh    no huge page advise flag
584    mg    mergeable advise flag
585    bt    arm64 BTI guarded page
586    mt    arm64 MTE allocation tags are enabled
587    um    userfaultfd missing tracking
588    uw    userfaultfd wr-protect tracking
589    ui    userfaultfd minor fault
590    ss    shadow/guarded control stack page
591    sl    sealed
592    lf    lock on fault pages
593    dp    always lazily freeable mapping
594    gu    maybe contains guard regions (if not set, definitely doesn't)
595    ==    =============================================================
596
597Note that there is no guarantee that every flag and associated mnemonic will
598be present in all further kernel releases. Things get changed, the flags may
599be vanished or the reverse -- new added. Interpretation of their meaning
600might change in future as well. So each consumer of these flags has to
601follow each specific kernel version for the exact semantic.
602
603This file is only present if the CONFIG_MMU kernel configuration option is
604enabled.
605
606Note: reading /proc/PID/maps or /proc/PID/smaps is inherently racy (consistent
607output can be achieved only in the single read call).
608
609This typically manifests when doing partial reads of these files while the
610memory map is being modified.  Despite the races, we do provide the following
611guarantees:
612
6131) The mapped addresses never go backwards, which implies no two
614   regions will ever overlap.
6152) If there is something at a given vaddr during the entirety of the
616   life of the smaps/maps walk, there will be some output for it.
617
618The /proc/PID/smaps_rollup file includes the same fields as /proc/PID/smaps,
619but their values are the sums of the corresponding values for all mappings of
620the process.  Additionally, it contains these fields:
621
622- Pss_Anon
623- Pss_File
624- Pss_Shmem
625
626They represent the proportional shares of anonymous, file, and shmem pages, as
627described for smaps above.  These fields are omitted in smaps since each
628mapping identifies the type (anon, file, or shmem) of all pages it contains.
629Thus all information in smaps_rollup can be derived from smaps, but at a
630significantly higher cost.
631
632The /proc/PID/clear_refs is used to reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG
633bits on both physical and virtual pages associated with a process, and the
634soft-dirty bit on pte (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/soft-dirty.rst
635for details).
636To clear the bits for all the pages associated with the process::
637
638    > echo 1 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
639
640To clear the bits for the anonymous pages associated with the process::
641
642    > echo 2 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
643
644To clear the bits for the file mapped pages associated with the process::
645
646    > echo 3 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
647
648To clear the soft-dirty bit::
649
650    > echo 4 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
651
652To reset the peak resident set size ("high water mark") to the process's
653current value::
654
655    > echo 5 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
656
657Any other value written to /proc/PID/clear_refs will have no effect.
658
659The /proc/pid/pagemap gives the PFN, which can be used to find the pageflags
660using /proc/kpageflags and number of times a page is mapped using
661/proc/kpagecount. For detailed explanation, see
662Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst.
663
664The /proc/pid/numa_maps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory
665locality and binding policy, as well as the memory usage (in pages) of
666each mapping. The output follows a general format where mapping details get
667summarized separated by blank spaces, one mapping per each file line::
668
669    address   policy    mapping details
670
671    00400000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app mapped=1 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
672    00600000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
673    3206000000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so mapped=26 mapmax=6 N0=24 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
674    320621f000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
675    3206220000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
676    3206221000 default anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
677    3206800000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so mapped=59 mapmax=21 active=55 N0=41 N3=18 kernelpagesize_kB=4
678    320698b000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so
679    3206b8a000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=2 dirty=2 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
680    3206b8e000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
681    3206b8f000 default anon=3 dirty=3 active=1 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
682    7f4dc10a2000 default anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
683    7f4dc10b4000 default anon=2 dirty=2 active=1 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
684    7f4dc1200000 default file=/anon_hugepage\040(deleted) huge anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=2048
685    7fff335f0000 default stack anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
686    7fff3369d000 default mapped=1 mapmax=35 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
687
688Where:
689
690"address" is the starting address for the mapping;
691
692"policy" reports the NUMA memory policy set for the mapping (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numa_memory_policy.rst);
693
694"mapping details" summarizes mapping data such as mapping type, page usage counters,
695node locality page counters (N0 == node0, N1 == node1, ...) and the kernel page
696size, in KB, that is backing the mapping up.
697
698Note that some kernel configurations do not track the precise number of times
699a page part of a larger allocation (e.g., THP) is mapped. In these
700configurations, "mapmax" might corresponds to the average number of mappings
701per page in such a larger allocation instead.
702
7031.2 Kernel data
704---------------
705
706Similar to  the  process entries, the kernel data files give information about
707the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in
708/proc and  are  listed  in Table 1-5. Not all of these will be present in your
709system. It  depends  on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which
710files are there, and which are missing.
711
712.. table:: Table 1-5: Kernel info in /proc
713
714 ============ ===============================================================
715 File         Content
716 ============ ===============================================================
717 allocinfo    Memory allocations profiling information
718 apm          Advanced power management info
719 bootconfig   Kernel command line obtained from boot config,
720 	      and, if there were kernel parameters from the
721	      boot loader, a "# Parameters from bootloader:"
722	      line followed by a line containing those
723	      parameters prefixed by "# ".			(5.5)
724 buddyinfo    Kernel memory allocator information (see text)	(2.5)
725 bus          Directory containing bus specific information
726 cmdline      Kernel command line, both from bootloader and embedded
727              in the kernel image
728 cpuinfo      Info about the CPU
729 devices      Available devices (block and character)
730 dma          Used DMS channels
731 filesystems  Supported filesystems
732 driver       Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc	(2.4)
733 execdomains  Execdomains, related to security			(2.4)
734 fb 	      Frame Buffer devices				(2.4)
735 fs 	      File system parameters, currently nfs/exports	(2.4)
736 ide          Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem
737 interrupts   Interrupt usage
738 iomem 	      Memory map					(2.4)
739 ioports      I/O port usage
740 irq 	      Masks for irq to cpu affinity			(2.4)(smp?)
741 isapnp       ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info				(2.4)
742 kcore        Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4))
743 kmsg         Kernel messages
744 ksyms        Kernel symbol table
745 loadavg      Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes;
746                number of processes currently runnable (running or on ready queue);
747                total number of processes in system;
748                last pid created.
749                All fields are separated by one space except "number of
750                processes currently runnable" and "total number of processes
751                in system", which are separated by a slash ('/'). Example:
752                0.61 0.61 0.55 3/828 22084
753 locks        Kernel locks
754 meminfo      Memory info
755 misc         Miscellaneous
756 modules      List of loaded modules
757 mounts       Mounted filesystems
758 net          Networking info (see text)
759 pagetypeinfo Additional page allocator information (see text)  (2.5)
760 partitions   Table of partitions known to the system
761 pci 	      Deprecated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/,
762              decoupled by lspci				(2.4)
763 rtc          Real time clock
764 scsi         SCSI info (see text)
765 slabinfo     Slab pool info
766 softirqs     softirq usage
767 stat         Overall statistics
768 swaps        Swap space utilization
769 sys          See chapter 2
770 sysvipc      Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm)		(2.4)
771 tty 	      Info of tty drivers
772 uptime       Wall clock since boot, combined idle time of all cpus
773 version      Kernel version
774 video 	      bttv info of video resources			(2.4)
775 vmallocinfo  Show vmalloced areas
776 ============ ===============================================================
777
778You can,  for  example,  check  which interrupts are currently in use and what
779they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts::
780
781  > cat /proc/interrupts
782             CPU0
783    0:    8728810          XT-PIC  timer
784    1:        895          XT-PIC  keyboard
785    2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
786    3:     531695          XT-PIC  aha152x
787    4:    2014133          XT-PIC  serial
788    5:      44401          XT-PIC  pcnet_cs
789    8:          2          XT-PIC  rtc
790   11:          8          XT-PIC  i82365
791   12:     182918          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse
792   13:          1          XT-PIC  fpu
793   14:    1232265          XT-PIC  ide0
794   15:          7          XT-PIC  ide1
795  NMI:          0
796
797In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the
798output of a SMP machine)::
799
800  > cat /proc/interrupts
801
802             CPU0       CPU1
803    0:    1243498    1214548    IO-APIC-edge  timer
804    1:       8949       8958    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
805    2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
806    5:      11286      10161    IO-APIC-edge  soundblaster
807    8:          1          0    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
808    9:      27422      27407    IO-APIC-edge  3c503
809   12:     113645     113873    IO-APIC-edge  PS/2 Mouse
810   13:          0          0          XT-PIC  fpu
811   14:      22491      24012    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
812   15:       2183       2415    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
813   17:      30564      30414   IO-APIC-level  eth0
814   18:        177        164   IO-APIC-level  bttv
815  NMI:    2457961    2457959
816  LOC:    2457882    2457881
817  ERR:       2155
818
819NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI
820(Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.
821
822LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.
823
824ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that
825connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected,
826the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big
827problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.
828
829In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again.  This time the goal was for
830/proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not
831just those considered 'most important'.  The new vectors are:
832
833THR
834  interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter
835  (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds
836  a configurable threshold.  Only available on some systems.
837
838TRM
839  a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold
840  has been exceeded for the CPU.  This interrupt may also be generated
841  when the temperature drops back to normal.
842
843SPU
844  a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered
845  by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC.  Hence
846  the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from.
847  For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector
848  of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.
849
850RES, CAL, TLB
851  rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are
852  sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS.  Typically,
853  their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to
854  determine the occurrence of interrupts of the given type.
855
856The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevant.  For example,
857the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms.  Others are
858suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor.  As of this writing, only
859i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.
860
861Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4.
862It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity. This means that you can "hook" an
863IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the
864irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and two files; default_smp_affinity and
865prof_cpu_mask.
866
867For example::
868
869  > ls /proc/irq/
870  0  10  12  14  16  18  2  4  6  8  prof_cpu_mask
871  1  11  13  15  17  19  3  5  7  9  default_smp_affinity
872  > ls /proc/irq/0/
873  smp_affinity
874
875smp_affinity is a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the
876IRQ. You can set it by doing::
877
878  > echo 1 > /proc/irq/10/smp_affinity
879
880This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo
8815 which means that only the first and third CPU can handle the IRQ.
882
883The contents of each smp_affinity file is the same by default::
884
885  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity
886  ffffffff
887
888There is an alternate interface, smp_affinity_list which allows specifying
889a CPU range instead of a bitmask::
890
891  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity_list
892  1024-1031
893
894The default_smp_affinity mask applies to all non-active IRQs, which are the
895IRQs which have not yet been allocated/activated, and hence which lack a
896/proc/irq/[0-9]* directory.
897
898The node file on an SMP system shows the node to which the device using the IRQ
899reports itself as being attached. This hardware locality information does not
900include information about any possible driver locality preference.
901
902prof_cpu_mask specifies which CPUs are to be profiled by the system wide
903profiler. Default value is ffffffff (all CPUs if there are only 32 of them).
904
905The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin
906between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has
907more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the
908best choice for almost everyone.  [Note this applies only to those IO-APIC's
909that support "Round Robin" interrupt distribution.]
910
911There are  three  more  important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys.
912The general  rule  is  that  the  contents,  or  even  the  existence of these
913directories, depend  on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the
914directory scsi  may  not  exist. The same is true with the net, which is there
915only when networking support is present in the running kernel.
916
917The slabinfo  file  gives  information  about  memory usage at the slab level.
918Linux uses  slab  pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2.
919Commonly used  objects  have  their  own  slab  pool (such as network buffers,
920directory cache, and so on).
921
922::
923
924    > cat /proc/buddyinfo
925
926    Node 0, zone      DMA      0      4      5      4      4      3 ...
927    Node 0, zone   Normal      1      0      0      1    101      8 ...
928    Node 0, zone  HighMem      2      0      0      1      1      0 ...
929
930External fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a
931useful tool for helping diagnose these problems.  Buddyinfo will give you a
932clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous
933allocation failed.
934
935Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are
936available.  In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in
937ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE
938available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc...
939
940More information relevant to external fragmentation can be found in
941pagetypeinfo::
942
943    > cat /proc/pagetypeinfo
944    Page block order: 9
945    Pages per block:  512
946
947    Free pages count per migrate type at order       0      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9     10
948    Node    0, zone      DMA, type    Unmovable      0      0      0      1      1      1      1      1      1      1      0
949    Node    0, zone      DMA, type  Reclaimable      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
950    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Movable      1      1      2      1      2      1      1      0      1      0      2
951    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Reserve      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      1      0
952    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Isolate      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
953    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type    Unmovable    103     54     77      1      1      1     11      8      7      1      9
954    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type  Reclaimable      0      0      2      1      0      0      0      0      1      0      0
955    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Movable    169    152    113     91     77     54     39     13      6      1    452
956    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Reserve      1      2      2      2      2      0      1      1      1      1      0
957    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Isolate      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
958
959    Number of blocks type     Unmovable  Reclaimable      Movable      Reserve      Isolate
960    Node 0, zone      DMA            2            0            5            1            0
961    Node 0, zone    DMA32           41            6          967            2            0
962
963Fragmentation avoidance in the kernel works by grouping pages of different
964migrate types into the same contiguous regions of memory called page blocks.
965A page block is typically the size of the default hugepage size, e.g. 2MB on
966X86-64. By keeping pages grouped based on their ability to move, the kernel
967can reclaim pages within a page block to satisfy a high-order allocation.
968
969The pagetypinfo begins with information on the size of a page block. It
970then gives the same type of information as buddyinfo except broken down
971by migrate-type and finishes with details on how many page blocks of each
972type exist.
973
974If min_free_kbytes has been tuned correctly (recommendations made by hugeadm
975from libhugetlbfs https://github.com/libhugetlbfs/libhugetlbfs/), one can
976make an estimate of the likely number of huge pages that can be allocated
977at a given point in time. All the "Movable" blocks should be allocatable
978unless memory has been mlock()'d. Some of the Reclaimable blocks should
979also be allocatable although a lot of filesystem metadata may have to be
980reclaimed to achieve this.
981
982
983allocinfo
984~~~~~~~~~
985
986Provides information about memory allocations at all locations in the code
987base. Each allocation in the code is identified by its source file, line
988number, module (if originates from a loadable module) and the function calling
989the allocation. The number of bytes allocated and number of calls at each
990location are reported. The first line indicates the version of the file, the
991second line is the header listing fields in the file.
992If file version is 2.0 or higher then each line may contain additional
993<key>:<value> pairs representing extra information about the call site.
994For example if the counters are not accurate, the line will be appended with
995"accurate:no" pair.
996
997Supported markers in v2:
998accurate:no
999
1000              Absolute values of the counters in this line are not accurate
1001              because of the failure to allocate memory to track some of the
1002              allocations made at this location.  Deltas in these counters are
1003              accurate, therefore counters can be used to track allocation size
1004              and count changes.
1005
1006Example output.
1007
1008::
1009
1010    > tail -n +3 /proc/allocinfo | sort -rn
1011   127664128    31168 mm/page_ext.c:270 func:alloc_page_ext
1012    56373248     4737 mm/slub.c:2259 func:alloc_slab_page
1013    14880768     3633 mm/readahead.c:247 func:page_cache_ra_unbounded
1014    14417920     3520 mm/mm_init.c:2530 func:alloc_large_system_hash
1015    13377536      234 block/blk-mq.c:3421 func:blk_mq_alloc_rqs
1016    11718656     2861 mm/filemap.c:1919 func:__filemap_get_folio
1017     9192960     2800 kernel/fork.c:307 func:alloc_thread_stack_node
1018     4206592        4 net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c:2567 func:nf_ct_alloc_hashtable
1019     4136960     1010 drivers/staging/ctagmod/ctagmod.c:20 [ctagmod] func:ctagmod_start
1020     3940352      962 mm/memory.c:4214 func:alloc_anon_folio
1021     2894464    22613 fs/kernfs/dir.c:615 func:__kernfs_new_node
1022     ...
1023
1024
1025meminfo
1026~~~~~~~
1027
1028Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory.  This
1029varies by architecture and compile options.  Some of the counters reported
1030here overlap.  The memory reported by the non overlapping counters may not
1031add up to the overall memory usage and the difference for some workloads
1032can be substantial.  In many cases there are other means to find out
1033additional memory using subsystem specific interfaces, for instance
1034/proc/net/sockstat for TCP memory allocations.
1035
1036Example output. You may not have all of these fields.
1037
1038::
1039
1040    > cat /proc/meminfo
1041
1042    MemTotal:       32858820 kB
1043    MemFree:        21001236 kB
1044    MemAvailable:   27214312 kB
1045    Buffers:          581092 kB
1046    Cached:          5587612 kB
1047    SwapCached:            0 kB
1048    Active:          3237152 kB
1049    Inactive:        7586256 kB
1050    Active(anon):      94064 kB
1051    Inactive(anon):  4570616 kB
1052    Active(file):    3143088 kB
1053    Inactive(file):  3015640 kB
1054    Unevictable:           0 kB
1055    Mlocked:               0 kB
1056    SwapTotal:             0 kB
1057    SwapFree:              0 kB
1058    Zswap:              1904 kB
1059    Zswapped:           7792 kB
1060    Dirty:                12 kB
1061    Writeback:             0 kB
1062    AnonPages:       4654780 kB
1063    Mapped:           266244 kB
1064    Shmem:              9976 kB
1065    KReclaimable:     517708 kB
1066    Slab:             660044 kB
1067    SReclaimable:     517708 kB
1068    SUnreclaim:       142336 kB
1069    KernelStack:       11168 kB
1070    PageTables:        20540 kB
1071    SecPageTables:         0 kB
1072    NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
1073    Bounce:                0 kB
1074    WritebackTmp:          0 kB
1075    CommitLimit:    16429408 kB
1076    Committed_AS:    7715148 kB
1077    VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
1078    VmallocUsed:       40444 kB
1079    VmallocChunk:          0 kB
1080    Percpu:            29312 kB
1081    EarlyMemtestBad:       0 kB
1082    HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
1083    AnonHugePages:   4149248 kB
1084    ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
1085    ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
1086    FileHugePages:         0 kB
1087    FilePmdMapped:         0 kB
1088    CmaTotal:              0 kB
1089    CmaFree:               0 kB
1090    Unaccepted:            0 kB
1091    Balloon:               0 kB
1092    HugePages_Total:       0
1093    HugePages_Free:        0
1094    HugePages_Rsvd:        0
1095    HugePages_Surp:        0
1096    Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
1097    Hugetlb:               0 kB
1098    DirectMap4k:      401152 kB
1099    DirectMap2M:    10008576 kB
1100    DirectMap1G:    24117248 kB
1101
1102MemTotal
1103              Total usable RAM (i.e. physical RAM minus a few reserved
1104              bits and the kernel binary code)
1105MemFree
1106              Total free RAM. On highmem systems, the sum of LowFree+HighFree
1107MemAvailable
1108              An estimate of how much memory is available for starting new
1109              applications, without swapping. Calculated from MemFree,
1110              SReclaimable, the size of the file LRU lists, and the low
1111              watermarks in each zone.
1112              The estimate takes into account that the system needs some
1113              page cache to function well, and that not all reclaimable
1114              slab will be reclaimable, due to items being in use. The
1115              impact of those factors will vary from system to system.
1116Buffers
1117              Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
1118              shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
1119Cached
1120              In-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
1121              pagecache) as well as tmpfs & shmem.
1122              Doesn't include SwapCached.
1123SwapCached
1124              Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but
1125              still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it
1126              doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already
1127              in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
1128Active
1129              Memory that has been used more recently and usually not
1130              reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
1131Inactive
1132              Memory which has been less recently used.  It is more
1133              eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
1134Unevictable
1135              Memory allocated for userspace which cannot be reclaimed, such
1136              as mlocked pages, ramfs backing pages, secret memfd pages etc.
1137Mlocked
1138              Memory locked with mlock().
1139HighTotal, HighFree
1140              Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory.
1141              Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or
1142              for the pagecache.  The kernel must use tricks to access
1143              this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
1144LowTotal, LowFree
1145              Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that
1146              highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the
1147              kernel's use for its own data structures.  Among many
1148              other things, it is where everything from the Slab is
1149              allocated.  Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
1150SwapTotal
1151              total amount of swap space available
1152SwapFree
1153              Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily
1154              on the disk
1155Zswap
1156              Memory consumed by the zswap backend (compressed size)
1157Zswapped
1158              Amount of anonymous memory stored in zswap (original size)
1159Dirty
1160              Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
1161Writeback
1162              Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
1163AnonPages
1164              Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables. Note that
1165              some kernel configurations might consider all pages part of a
1166              larger allocation (e.g., THP) as "mapped", as soon as a single
1167              page is mapped.
1168Mapped
1169              files which have been mmapped, such as libraries. Note that some
1170              kernel configurations might consider all pages part of a larger
1171              allocation (e.g., THP) as "mapped", as soon as a single page is
1172              mapped.
1173Shmem
1174              Total memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs
1175KReclaimable
1176              Kernel allocations that the kernel will attempt to reclaim
1177              under memory pressure. Includes SReclaimable (below), and other
1178              direct allocations with a shrinker.
1179Slab
1180              in-kernel data structures cache
1181SReclaimable
1182              Part of Slab, that might be reclaimed, such as caches
1183SUnreclaim
1184              Part of Slab, that cannot be reclaimed on memory pressure
1185KernelStack
1186              Memory consumed by the kernel stacks of all tasks
1187PageTables
1188              Memory consumed by userspace page tables
1189SecPageTables
1190              Memory consumed by secondary page tables, this currently includes
1191              KVM mmu and IOMMU allocations on x86 and arm64.
1192NFS_Unstable
1193              Always zero. Previously counted pages which had been written to
1194              the server, but has not been committed to stable storage.
1195Bounce
1196              Always zero. Previously memory used for block device
1197              "bounce buffers".
1198WritebackTmp
1199              Always zero. Previously memory used by FUSE for temporary
1200              writeback buffers.
1201CommitLimit
1202              Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'),
1203              this is the total amount of  memory currently available to
1204              be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to
1205              if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in
1206              'vm.overcommit_memory').
1207
1208              The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula::
1209
1210                CommitLimit = ([total RAM pages] - [total huge TLB pages]) *
1211                               overcommit_ratio / 100 + [total swap pages]
1212
1213              For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G
1214              of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would
1215              yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
1216
1217              For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation
1218              in mm/overcommit-accounting.
1219Committed_AS
1220              The amount of memory presently allocated on the system.
1221              The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which
1222              has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been
1223              "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G
1224              of memory, but only touches 300M of it will show up as
1225              using 1G. This 1G is memory which has been "committed" to
1226              by the VM and can be used at any time by the allocating
1227              application. With strict overcommit enabled on the system
1228              (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'), allocations which would
1229              exceed the CommitLimit (detailed above) will not be permitted.
1230              This is useful if one needs to guarantee that processes will
1231              not fail due to lack of memory once that memory has been
1232              successfully allocated.
1233VmallocTotal
1234              total size of vmalloc virtual address space
1235VmallocUsed
1236              amount of vmalloc area which is used
1237VmallocChunk
1238              largest contiguous block of vmalloc area which is free
1239Percpu
1240              Memory allocated to the percpu allocator used to back percpu
1241              allocations. This stat excludes the cost of metadata.
1242EarlyMemtestBad
1243              The amount of RAM/memory in kB, that was identified as corrupted
1244              by early memtest. If memtest was not run, this field will not
1245              be displayed at all. Size is never rounded down to 0 kB.
1246              That means if 0 kB is reported, you can safely assume
1247              there was at least one pass of memtest and none of the passes
1248              found a single faulty byte of RAM.
1249HardwareCorrupted
1250              The amount of RAM/memory in KB, the kernel identifies as
1251              corrupted.
1252AnonHugePages
1253              Non-file backed huge pages mapped into userspace page tables
1254ShmemHugePages
1255              Memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs allocated
1256              with huge pages
1257ShmemPmdMapped
1258              Shared memory mapped into userspace with huge pages
1259FileHugePages
1260              Memory used for filesystem data (page cache) allocated
1261              with huge pages
1262FilePmdMapped
1263              Page cache mapped into userspace with huge pages
1264CmaTotal
1265              Memory reserved for the Contiguous Memory Allocator (CMA)
1266CmaFree
1267              Free remaining memory in the CMA reserves
1268Unaccepted
1269              Memory that has not been accepted by the guest
1270Balloon
1271              Memory returned to Host by VM Balloon Drivers
1272HugePages_Total, HugePages_Free, HugePages_Rsvd, HugePages_Surp, Hugepagesize, Hugetlb
1273              See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst.
1274DirectMap4k, DirectMap2M, DirectMap1G
1275              Breakdown of page table sizes used in the kernel's
1276              identity mapping of RAM
1277
1278vmallocinfo
1279~~~~~~~~~~~
1280
1281Provides information about vmalloced/vmaped areas. One line per area,
1282containing the virtual address range of the area, size in bytes,
1283caller information of the creator, and optional information depending
1284on the kind of area:
1285
1286 ==========  ===================================================
1287 pages=nr    number of pages
1288 phys=addr   if a physical address was specified
1289 ioremap     I/O mapping (ioremap() and friends)
1290 vmalloc     vmalloc() area
1291 vmap        vmap()ed pages
1292 user        VM_USERMAP area
1293 vpages      buffer for pages pointers was vmalloced (huge area)
1294 N<node>=nr  (Only on NUMA kernels)
1295             Number of pages allocated on memory node <node>
1296 ==========  ===================================================
1297
1298::
1299
1300    > cat /proc/vmallocinfo
1301    0xffffc20000000000-0xffffc20000201000 2101248 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
1302    /0x2c0 pages=512 vmalloc N0=128 N1=128 N2=128 N3=128
1303    0xffffc20000201000-0xffffc20000302000 1052672 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
1304    /0x2c0 pages=256 vmalloc N0=64 N1=64 N2=64 N3=64
1305    0xffffc20000302000-0xffffc20000304000    8192 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
1306    phys=7fee8000 ioremap
1307    0xffffc20000304000-0xffffc20000307000   12288 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
1308    phys=7fee7000 ioremap
1309    0xffffc2000031d000-0xffffc2000031f000    8192 init_vdso_vars+0x112/0x210
1310    0xffffc2000031f000-0xffffc2000032b000   49152 cramfs_uncompress_init+0x2e ...
1311    /0x80 pages=11 vmalloc N0=3 N1=3 N2=2 N3=3
1312    0xffffc2000033a000-0xffffc2000033d000   12288 sys_swapon+0x640/0xac0      ...
1313    pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
1314    0xffffc20000347000-0xffffc2000034c000   20480 xt_alloc_table_info+0xfe ...
1315    /0x130 [x_tables] pages=4 vmalloc N0=4
1316    0xffffffffa0000000-0xffffffffa000f000   61440 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1317    pages=14 vmalloc N2=14
1318    0xffffffffa000f000-0xffffffffa0014000   20480 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1319    pages=4 vmalloc N1=4
1320    0xffffffffa0014000-0xffffffffa0017000   12288 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1321    pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
1322    0xffffffffa0017000-0xffffffffa0022000   45056 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1323    pages=10 vmalloc N0=10
1324
1325
1326softirqs
1327~~~~~~~~
1328
1329Provides counts of softirq handlers serviced since boot time, for each CPU.
1330
1331::
1332
1333    > cat /proc/softirqs
1334		  CPU0       CPU1       CPU2       CPU3
1335	HI:          0          0          0          0
1336    TIMER:       27166      27120      27097      27034
1337    NET_TX:          0          0          0         17
1338    NET_RX:         42          0          0         39
1339    BLOCK:           0          0        107       1121
1340    TASKLET:         0          0          0        290
1341    SCHED:       27035      26983      26971      26746
1342    HRTIMER:         0          0          0          0
1343	RCU:      1678       1769       2178       2250
1344
13451.3 Networking info in /proc/net
1346--------------------------------
1347
1348The subdirectory  /proc/net  follows  the  usual  pattern. Table 1-8 shows the
1349additional values  you  get  for  IP  version 6 if you configure the kernel to
1350support this. Table 1-9 lists the files and their meaning.
1351
1352
1353.. table:: Table 1-8: IPv6 info in /proc/net
1354
1355 ========== =====================================================
1356 File       Content
1357 ========== =====================================================
1358 udp6       UDP sockets (IPv6)
1359 tcp6       TCP sockets (IPv6)
1360 raw6       Raw device statistics (IPv6)
1361 igmp6      IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6)
1362 if_inet6   List of IPv6 interface addresses
1363 ipv6_route Kernel routing table for IPv6
1364 rt6_stats  Global IPv6 routing tables statistics
1365 sockstat6  Socket statistics (IPv6)
1366 snmp6      Snmp data (IPv6)
1367 ========== =====================================================
1368
1369.. table:: Table 1-9: Network info in /proc/net
1370
1371 ============= ================================================================
1372 File          Content
1373 ============= ================================================================
1374 arp           Kernel  ARP table
1375 dev           network devices with statistics
1376 dev_mcast     the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too
1377               (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound
1378               addresses).
1379 dev_stat      network device status
1380 ip_fwchains   Firewall chain linkage
1381 ip_fwnames    Firewall chain names
1382 ip_masq       Directory containing the masquerading tables
1383 ip_masquerade Major masquerading table
1384 netstat       Network statistics
1385 raw           raw device statistics
1386 route         Kernel routing table
1387 rpc           Directory containing rpc info
1388 rt_cache      Routing cache
1389 snmp          SNMP data
1390 sockstat      Socket statistics
1391 softnet_stat  Per-CPU incoming packets queues statistics of online CPUs
1392 tcp           TCP  sockets
1393 udp           UDP sockets
1394 unix          UNIX domain sockets
1395 wireless      Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc)
1396 igmp          IP multicast addresses, which this host joined
1397 psched        Global packet scheduler parameters.
1398 netlink       List of PF_NETLINK sockets
1399 ip_mr_vifs    List of multicast virtual interfaces
1400 ip_mr_cache   List of multicast routing cache
1401 ============= ================================================================
1402
1403You can  use  this  information  to see which network devices are available in
1404your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices::
1405
1406  > cat /proc/net/dev
1407  Inter-|Receive                                                   |[...
1408   face |bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[...
1409      lo:  908188   5596     0    0    0     0          0         0 [...
1410    ppp0:15475140  20721   410    0    0   410          0         0 [...
1411    eth0:  614530   7085     0    0    0     0          0         1 [...
1412
1413  ...] Transmit
1414  ...] bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
1415  ...]  908188     5596    0    0    0     0       0          0
1416  ...] 1375103    17405    0    0    0     0       0          0
1417  ...] 1703981     5535    0    0    0     3       0          0
1418
1419In addition, each Channel Bond interface has its own directory.  For
1420example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/.
1421It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the
1422current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how
1423many times the slaves link has failed.
1424
14251.4 SCSI info
1426-------------
1427
1428If you have a SCSI or ATA host adapter in your system, you'll find a
1429subdirectory named after the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi.
1430You'll also see a list of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi::
1431
1432  >cat /proc/scsi/scsi
1433  Attached devices:
1434  Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
1435    Vendor: IBM      Model: DGHS09U          Rev: 03E0
1436    Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 03
1437  Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
1438    Vendor: PIONEER  Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S   Rev: 1.04
1439    Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI SCSI revision: 02
1440
1441
1442The directory  named  after  the driver has one file for each adapter found in
1443the system.  These  files  contain information about the controller, including
1444the used  IRQ  and  the  IO  address range. The amount of information shown is
1445dependent on  the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec
1446AHA-2940 SCSI adapter::
1447
1448  > cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0
1449
1450  Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4
1451  Compile Options:
1452    TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled
1453    AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS     : Disabled
1454    AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY    : 5
1455  Adapter Configuration:
1456             SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter
1457                             Ultra Wide Controller
1458      PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000
1459   Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used.
1460        Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled
1461                      IRQ: 10
1462                     SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2,
1463                           Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255
1464               Interrupts: 160328
1465        BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6
1466     Adapter Control Word: 0x005b
1467     Extended Translation: Enabled
1468  Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff
1469       Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001
1470   Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000
1471  Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000
1472  Default Tag Queue Depth: 8
1473      Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0:
1474        {255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255}
1475      Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0:
1476        {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
1477  Statistics:
1478  (scsi0:0:0:0)
1479    Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8
1480    Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0)
1481    Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes)
1482  (scsi0:0:6:0)
1483    Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15
1484    Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0)
1485    Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes)
1486
1487
14881.5 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
1489---------------------------------------
1490
1491The directory  /proc/parport  contains information about the parallel ports of
1492your system.  It  has  one  subdirectory  for  each port, named after the port
1493number (0,1,2,...).
1494
1495These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-10.
1496
1497
1498.. table:: Table 1-10: Files in /proc/parport
1499
1500 ========= ====================================================================
1501 File      Content
1502 ========= ====================================================================
1503 autoprobe Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired.
1504 devices   list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the
1505           name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear
1506           against any).
1507 hardware  Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel.
1508 irq       IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate
1509           file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ
1510           number or none).
1511 ========= ====================================================================
1512
15131.6 TTY info in /proc/tty
1514-------------------------
1515
1516Information about  the  available  and actually used tty's can be found in the
1517directory /proc/tty. You'll find  entries  for drivers and line disciplines in
1518this directory, as shown in Table 1-11.
1519
1520
1521.. table:: Table 1-11: Files in /proc/tty
1522
1523 ============= ==============================================
1524 File          Content
1525 ============= ==============================================
1526 drivers       list of drivers and their usage
1527 ldiscs        registered line disciplines
1528 driver/serial usage statistic and status of single tty lines
1529 ============= ==============================================
1530
1531To see  which  tty's  are  currently in use, you can simply look into the file
1532/proc/tty/drivers::
1533
1534  > cat /proc/tty/drivers
1535  pty_slave            /dev/pts      136   0-255 pty:slave
1536  pty_master           /dev/ptm      128   0-255 pty:master
1537  pty_slave            /dev/ttyp       3   0-255 pty:slave
1538  pty_master           /dev/pty        2   0-255 pty:master
1539  serial               /dev/cua        5   64-67 serial:callout
1540  serial               /dev/ttyS       4   64-67 serial
1541  /dev/tty0            /dev/tty0       4       0 system:vtmaster
1542  /dev/ptmx            /dev/ptmx       5       2 system
1543  /dev/console         /dev/console    5       1 system:console
1544  /dev/tty             /dev/tty        5       0 system:/dev/tty
1545  unknown              /dev/tty        4    1-63 console
1546
1547
15481.7 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
1549-------------------------------------------------
1550
1551Various pieces   of  information about  kernel activity  are  available in the
1552/proc/stat file.  All  of  the numbers reported  in  this file are  aggregates
1553since the system first booted.  For a quick look, simply cat the file::
1554
1555  > cat /proc/stat
1556  cpu  237902850 368826709 106375398 1873517540 1135548 0 14507935 0 0 0
1557  cpu0 60045249 91891769 26331539 468411416 495718 0 5739640 0 0 0
1558  cpu1 59746288 91759249 26609887 468860630 312281 0 4384817 0 0 0
1559  cpu2 59489247 92985423 26904446 467808813 171668 0 2268998 0 0 0
1560  cpu3 58622065 92190267 26529524 468436680 155879 0 2114478 0 0 0
1561  intr 8688370575 8 3373 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 40791 0 0 353317 0 0 0 0 224789828 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 190974333 41958554 123983334 43 0 224593 0 0 0 <more 0's deleted>
1562  ctxt 22848221062
1563  btime 1605316999
1564  processes 746787147
1565  procs_running 2
1566  procs_blocked 0
1567  softirq 12121874454 100099120 3938138295 127375644 2795979 187870761 0 173808342 3072582055 52608 224184354
1568
1569The very first  "cpu" line aggregates the  numbers in all  of the other "cpuN"
1570lines.  These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing
1571different kinds of work.  Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a
1572second).  The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
1573
1574- user: normal processes executing in user mode
1575- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
1576- system: processes executing in kernel mode
1577- idle: twiddling thumbs
1578- iowait: In a word, iowait stands for waiting for I/O to complete. But there
1579  are several problems:
1580
1581  1. CPU will not wait for I/O to complete, iowait is the time that a task is
1582     waiting for I/O to complete. When CPU goes into idle state for
1583     outstanding task I/O, another task will be scheduled on this CPU.
1584  2. In a multi-core CPU, the task waiting for I/O to complete is not running
1585     on any CPU, so the iowait of each CPU is difficult to calculate.
1586  3. The value of iowait field in /proc/stat will decrease in certain
1587     conditions.
1588
1589  So, the iowait is not reliable by reading from /proc/stat.
1590- irq: servicing interrupts
1591- softirq: servicing softirqs
1592- steal: involuntary wait
1593- guest: running a normal guest
1594- guest_nice: running a niced guest
1595
1596The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts  serviced since boot time, for each
1597of the  possible system interrupts.   The first  column  is the  total of  all
1598interrupts serviced  including  unnumbered  architecture specific  interrupts;
1599each  subsequent column is the  total for that particular numbered interrupt.
1600Unnumbered interrupts are not shown, only summed into the total.
1601
1602The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.
1603
1604The "btime" line gives  the time at which the  system booted, in seconds since
1605the Unix epoch.
1606
1607The "processes" line gives the number  of processes and threads created, which
1608includes (but  is not limited  to) those  created by  calls to the  fork() and
1609clone() system calls.
1610
1611The "procs_running" line gives the total number of threads that are
1612running or ready to run (i.e., the total number of runnable threads).
1613
1614The   "procs_blocked" line gives  the  number of  processes currently blocked,
1615waiting for I/O to complete.
1616
1617The "softirq" line gives counts of softirqs serviced since boot time, for each
1618of the possible system softirqs. The first column is the total of all
1619softirqs serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular
1620softirq.
1621
1622
16231.8 Ext4 file system parameters
1624-------------------------------
1625
1626Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in
1627/proc/fs/ext4.  Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
1628/proc/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /proc/fs/ext4/hdc or
1629/proc/fs/ext4/sda9 or /proc/fs/ext4/dm-0).   The files in each per-device
1630directory are shown in Table 1-12, below.
1631
1632.. table:: Table 1-12: Files in /proc/fs/ext4/<devname>
1633
1634 ==============  ==========================================================
1635 File            Content
1636 mb_groups       details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks
1637 ==============  ==========================================================
1638
16391.9 /proc/consoles
1640-------------------
1641Shows registered system console lines.
1642
1643To see which character device lines are currently used for the system console
1644/dev/console, you may simply look into the file /proc/consoles::
1645
1646  > cat /proc/consoles
1647  tty0                 -WU (ECp)       4:7
1648  ttyS0                -W- (Ep)        4:64
1649
1650The columns are:
1651
1652+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1653| device             | name of the device                                    |
1654+====================+=======================================================+
1655| operations         | * R = can do read operations                          |
1656|                    | * W = can do write operations                         |
1657|                    | * U = can do unblank                                  |
1658+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1659| flags              | * E = it is enabled                                   |
1660|                    | * C = it is preferred console                         |
1661|                    | * B = it is primary boot console                      |
1662|                    | * p = it is used for printk buffer                    |
1663|                    | * b = it is not a TTY but a Braille device            |
1664|                    | * a = it is safe to use when cpu is offline           |
1665+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1666| major:minor        | major and minor number of the device separated by a   |
1667|                    | colon                                                 |
1668+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1669
1670Summary
1671-------
1672
1673The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only
1674allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status
1675by reading files in the hierarchy.
1676
1677The directory  structure  of /proc reflects the types of information and makes
1678it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data.
1679
1680Chapter 2: Modifying System Parameters
1681======================================
1682
1683In This Chapter
1684---------------
1685
1686* Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys
1687* Exploring the files which modify certain parameters
1688* Review of the /proc/sys file tree
1689
1690------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1691
1692A very  interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only
1693a source  of  information,  it also allows you to change parameters within the
1694kernel. Be  very  careful  when attempting this. You can optimize your system,
1695but you  can  also  cause  it  to  crash.  Never  alter kernel parameters on a
1696production system.  Set  up  a  development machine and test to make sure that
1697everything works  the  way  you want it to. You may have no alternative but to
1698reboot the machine once an error has been made.
1699
1700To change  a  value,  simply  echo  the new value into the file.
1701You need to be root to do this. You  can  create  your  own  boot script
1702to perform this every time your system boots.
1703
1704The files  in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and
1705general things  in  the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files
1706can inadvertently  disrupt  your  system,  it  is  advisable  to  read  both
1707documentation and  source  before actually making adjustments. In any case, be
1708very careful  when  writing  to  any  of these files. The entries in /proc may
1709change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt
1710review the kernel documentation in the directory linux/Documentation.
1711This chapter  is  heavily  based  on the documentation included in the pre 2.2
1712kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel.
1713
1714Please see: Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/ directory for descriptions of
1715these entries.
1716
1717Summary
1718-------
1719
1720Certain aspects  of  kernel  behavior  can be modified at runtime, without the
1721need to  recompile  the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the
1722/proc/sys tree  can  not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo
1723command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings
1724of the kernel.
1725
1726
1727Chapter 3: Per-process Parameters
1728=================================
1729
17303.1 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj & /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj- Adjust the oom-killer score
1731--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1732
1733These files can be used to adjust the badness heuristic used to select which
1734process gets killed in out of memory (oom) conditions.
1735
1736The badness heuristic assigns a value to each candidate task ranging from 0
1737(never kill) to 1000 (always kill) to determine which process is targeted.  The
1738units are roughly a proportion along that range of allowed memory the process
1739may allocate from based on an estimation of its current memory and swap use.
1740For example, if a task is using all allowed memory, its badness score will be
17411000.  If it is using half of its allowed memory, its score will be 500.
1742
1743The amount of "allowed" memory depends on the context in which the oom killer
1744was called.  If it is due to the memory assigned to the allocating task's cpuset
1745being exhausted, the allowed memory represents the set of mems assigned to that
1746cpuset.  If it is due to a mempolicy's node(s) being exhausted, the allowed
1747memory represents the set of mempolicy nodes.  If it is due to a memory
1748limit (or swap limit) being reached, the allowed memory is that configured
1749limit.  Finally, if it is due to the entire system being out of memory, the
1750allowed memory represents all allocatable resources.
1751
1752The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj is added to the badness score before it
1753is used to determine which task to kill.  Acceptable values range from -1000
1754(OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MIN) to +1000 (OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MAX).  This allows userspace to
1755polarize the preference for oom killing either by always preferring a certain
1756task or completely disabling it.  The lowest possible value, -1000, is
1757equivalent to disabling oom killing entirely for that task since it will always
1758report a badness score of 0.
1759
1760Consequently, it is very simple for userspace to define the amount of memory to
1761consider for each task.  Setting a /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj value of +500, for
1762example, is roughly equivalent to allowing the remainder of tasks sharing the
1763same system, cpuset, mempolicy, or memory controller resources to use at least
176450% more memory.  A value of -500, on the other hand, would be roughly
1765equivalent to discounting 50% of the task's allowed memory from being considered
1766as scoring against the task.
1767
1768For backwards compatibility with previous kernels, /proc/<pid>/oom_adj may also
1769be used to tune the badness score.  Its acceptable values range from -16
1770(OOM_ADJUST_MIN) to +15 (OOM_ADJUST_MAX) and a special value of -17
1771(OOM_DISABLE) to disable oom killing entirely for that task.  Its value is
1772scaled linearly with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj.
1773
1774The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj may be reduced no lower than the last
1775value set by a CAP_SYS_RESOURCE process. To reduce the value any lower
1776requires CAP_SYS_RESOURCE.
1777
1778
17793.2 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
1780-------------------------------------------------------------
1781
1782This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer for
1783any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj to tune which
1784process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.
1785
1786Please note that the exported value includes oom_score_adj so it is
1787effectively in range [0,2000].
1788
1789
17903.3  /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
1791-------------------------------------------------------
1792
1793This file contains IO statistics for each running process.
1794
1795Example
1796~~~~~~~
1797
1798::
1799
1800    test:/tmp # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.dat &
1801    [1] 3828
1802
1803    test:/tmp # cat /proc/3828/io
1804    rchar: 323934931
1805    wchar: 323929600
1806    syscr: 632687
1807    syscw: 632675
1808    read_bytes: 0
1809    write_bytes: 323932160
1810    cancelled_write_bytes: 0
1811
1812
1813Description
1814~~~~~~~~~~~
1815
1816rchar
1817^^^^^
1818
1819I/O counter: chars read
1820The number of bytes which this task has caused to be read from storage. This
1821is simply the sum of bytes which this process passed to read() and pread().
1822It includes things like tty IO and it is unaffected by whether or not actual
1823physical disk IO was required (the read might have been satisfied from
1824pagecache).
1825
1826
1827wchar
1828^^^^^
1829
1830I/O counter: chars written
1831The number of bytes which this task has caused, or shall cause to be written
1832to disk. Similar caveats apply here as with rchar.
1833
1834
1835syscr
1836^^^^^
1837
1838I/O counter: read syscalls
1839Attempt to count the number of read I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like read()
1840and pread().
1841
1842
1843syscw
1844^^^^^
1845
1846I/O counter: write syscalls
1847Attempt to count the number of write I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like
1848write() and pwrite().
1849
1850
1851read_bytes
1852^^^^^^^^^^
1853
1854I/O counter: bytes read
1855Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process really did cause to
1856be fetched from the storage layer. Done at the submit_bio() level, so it is
1857accurate for block-backed filesystems. <please add status regarding NFS and
1858CIFS at a later time>
1859
1860
1861write_bytes
1862^^^^^^^^^^^
1863
1864I/O counter: bytes written
1865Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process caused to be sent to
1866the storage layer. This is done at page-dirtying time.
1867
1868
1869cancelled_write_bytes
1870^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1871
1872The big inaccuracy here is truncate. If a process writes 1MB to a file and
1873then deletes the file, it will in fact perform no writeout. But it will have
1874been accounted as having caused 1MB of write.
1875In other words: The number of bytes which this process caused to not happen,
1876by truncating pagecache. A task can cause "negative" IO too. If this task
1877truncates some dirty pagecache, some IO which another task has been accounted
1878for (in its write_bytes) will not be happening. We _could_ just subtract that
1879from the truncating task's write_bytes, but there is information loss in doing
1880that.
1881
1882
1883.. Note::
1884
1885   At its current implementation state, this is a bit racy on 32-bit machines:
1886   if process A reads process B's /proc/pid/io while process B is updating one
1887   of those 64-bit counters, process A could see an intermediate result.
1888
1889
1890More information about this can be found within the taskstats documentation in
1891Documentation/accounting.
1892
18933.4 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
1894---------------------------------------------------------------
1895When a process is dumped, all anonymous memory is written to a core file as
1896long as the size of the core file isn't limited. But sometimes we don't want
1897to dump some memory segments, for example, huge shared memory or DAX.
1898Conversely, sometimes we want to save file-backed memory segments into a core
1899file, not only the individual files.
1900
1901/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter allows you to customize which memory segments
1902will be dumped when the <pid> process is dumped. coredump_filter is a bitmask
1903of memory types. If a bit of the bitmask is set, memory segments of the
1904corresponding memory type are dumped, otherwise they are not dumped.
1905
1906The following 9 memory types are supported:
1907
1908  - (bit 0) anonymous private memory
1909  - (bit 1) anonymous shared memory
1910  - (bit 2) file-backed private memory
1911  - (bit 3) file-backed shared memory
1912  - (bit 4) ELF header pages in file-backed private memory areas (it is
1913    effective only if the bit 2 is cleared)
1914  - (bit 5) hugetlb private memory
1915  - (bit 6) hugetlb shared memory
1916  - (bit 7) DAX private memory
1917  - (bit 8) DAX shared memory
1918
1919  Note that MMIO pages such as frame buffer are never dumped and vDSO pages
1920  are always dumped regardless of the bitmask status.
1921
1922  Note that bits 0-4 don't affect hugetlb or DAX memory. hugetlb memory is
1923  only affected by bit 5-6, and DAX is only affected by bits 7-8.
1924
1925The default value of coredump_filter is 0x33; this means all anonymous memory
1926segments, ELF header pages and hugetlb private memory are dumped.
1927
1928If you don't want to dump all shared memory segments attached to pid 1234,
1929write 0x31 to the process's proc file::
1930
1931  $ echo 0x31 > /proc/1234/coredump_filter
1932
1933When a new process is created, the process inherits the bitmask status from its
1934parent. It is useful to set up coredump_filter before the program runs.
1935For example::
1936
1937  $ echo 0x7 > /proc/self/coredump_filter
1938  $ ./some_program
1939
19403.5	/proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
1941--------------------------------------------------------
1942
1943This file contains lines of the form::
1944
1945    36 35 98:0 /mnt1 /mnt2 rw,noatime master:1 - ext3 /dev/root rw,errors=continue
1946    (1)(2)(3)   (4)   (5)      (6)     (n…m) (m+1)(m+2) (m+3)         (m+4)
1947
1948    (1)   mount ID:        unique identifier of the mount (may be reused after umount)
1949    (2)   parent ID:       ID of parent (or of self for the top of the mount tree)
1950    (3)   major:minor:     value of st_dev for files on filesystem
1951    (4)   root:            root of the mount within the filesystem
1952    (5)   mount point:     mount point relative to the process's root
1953    (6)   mount options:   per mount options
1954    (n…m) optional fields: zero or more fields of the form "tag[:value]"
1955    (m+1) separator:       marks the end of the optional fields
1956    (m+2) filesystem type: name of filesystem of the form "type[.subtype]"
1957    (m+3) mount source:    filesystem specific information or "none"
1958    (m+4) super options:   per super block options
1959
1960Parsers should ignore all unrecognised optional fields.  Currently the
1961possible optional fields are:
1962
1963================  ==============================================================
1964shared:X          mount is shared in peer group X
1965master:X          mount is slave to peer group X
1966propagate_from:X  mount is slave and receives propagation from peer group X [#]_
1967unbindable        mount is unbindable
1968================  ==============================================================
1969
1970.. [#] X is the closest dominant peer group under the process's root.  If
1971       X is the immediate master of the mount, or if there's no dominant peer
1972       group under the same root, then only the "master:X" field is present
1973       and not the "propagate_from:X" field.
1974
1975For more information on mount propagation see:
1976
1977  Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.rst
1978
1979
19803.6	/proc/<pid>/comm  & /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/comm
1981--------------------------------------------------------
1982These files provide a method to access a task's comm value. It also allows for
1983a task to set its own or one of its thread siblings comm value. The comm value
1984is limited in size compared to the cmdline value, so writing anything longer
1985then the kernel's TASK_COMM_LEN (currently 16 chars, including the NUL
1986terminator) will result in a truncated comm value.
1987
1988
19893.7	/proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/children - Information about task children
1990-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1991This file provides a fast way to retrieve first level children pids
1992of a task pointed by <pid>/<tid> pair. The format is a space separated
1993stream of pids.
1994
1995Note the "first level" here -- if a child has its own children they will
1996not be listed here; one needs to read /proc/<children-pid>/task/<tid>/children
1997to obtain the descendants.
1998
1999Since this interface is intended to be fast and cheap it doesn't
2000guarantee to provide precise results and some children might be
2001skipped, especially if they've exited right after we printed their
2002pids, so one needs to either stop or freeze processes being inspected
2003if precise results are needed.
2004
2005
20063.8	/proc/<pid>/fdinfo/<fd> - Information about opened file
2007---------------------------------------------------------------
2008This file provides information associated with an opened file. The regular
2009files have at least four fields -- 'pos', 'flags', 'mnt_id' and 'ino'.
2010The 'pos' represents the current offset of the opened file in decimal
2011form [see lseek(2) for details], 'flags' denotes the octal O_xxx mask the
2012file has been created with [see open(2) for details] and 'mnt_id' represents
2013mount ID of the file system containing the opened file [see 3.5
2014/proc/<pid>/mountinfo for details]. 'ino' represents the inode number of
2015the file.
2016
2017A typical output is::
2018
2019	pos:	0
2020	flags:	0100002
2021	mnt_id:	19
2022	ino:	63107
2023
2024All locks associated with a file descriptor are shown in its fdinfo too::
2025
2026    lock:       1: FLOCK  ADVISORY  WRITE 359 00:13:11691 0 EOF
2027
2028The files such as eventfd, fsnotify, signalfd, epoll among the regular pos/flags
2029pair provide additional information particular to the objects they represent.
2030
2031Eventfd files
2032~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2033
2034::
2035
2036	pos:	0
2037	flags:	04002
2038	mnt_id:	9
2039	ino:	63107
2040	eventfd-count:	5a
2041
2042where 'eventfd-count' is hex value of a counter.
2043
2044Signalfd files
2045~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2046
2047::
2048
2049	pos:	0
2050	flags:	04002
2051	mnt_id:	9
2052	ino:	63107
2053	sigmask:	0000000000000200
2054
2055where 'sigmask' is hex value of the signal mask associated
2056with a file.
2057
2058Epoll files
2059~~~~~~~~~~~
2060
2061::
2062
2063	pos:	0
2064	flags:	02
2065	mnt_id:	9
2066	ino:	63107
2067	tfd:        5 events:       1d data: ffffffffffffffff pos:0 ino:61af sdev:7
2068
2069where 'tfd' is a target file descriptor number in decimal form,
2070'events' is events mask being watched and the 'data' is data
2071associated with a target [see epoll(7) for more details].
2072
2073The 'pos' is current offset of the target file in decimal form
2074[see lseek(2)], 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device numbers
2075where target file resides, all in hex format.
2076
2077Fsnotify files
2078~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2079For inotify files the format is the following::
2080
2081	pos:	0
2082	flags:	02000000
2083	mnt_id:	9
2084	ino:	63107
2085	inotify wd:3 ino:9e7e sdev:800013 mask:800afce ignored_mask:0 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:7e9e0000640d1b6d
2086
2087where 'wd' is a watch descriptor in decimal form, i.e. a target file
2088descriptor number, 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device where the
2089target file resides and the 'mask' is the mask of events, all in hex
2090form [see inotify(7) for more details].
2091
2092If the kernel was built with exportfs support, the path to the target
2093file is encoded as a file handle.  The file handle is provided by three
2094fields 'fhandle-bytes', 'fhandle-type' and 'f_handle', all in hex
2095format.
2096
2097If the kernel is built without exportfs support the file handle won't be
2098printed out.
2099
2100If there is no inotify mark attached yet the 'inotify' line will be omitted.
2101
2102For fanotify files the format is::
2103
2104	pos:	0
2105	flags:	02
2106	mnt_id:	9
2107	ino:	63107
2108	fanotify flags:10 event-flags:0
2109	fanotify mnt_id:12 mflags:40 mask:38 ignored_mask:40000003
2110	fanotify ino:4f969 sdev:800013 mflags:0 mask:3b ignored_mask:40000000 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:69f90400c275b5b4
2111
2112where fanotify 'flags' and 'event-flags' are values used in fanotify_init
2113call, 'mnt_id' is the mount point identifier, 'mflags' is the value of
2114flags associated with mark which are tracked separately from events
2115mask. 'ino' and 'sdev' are target inode and device, 'mask' is the events
2116mask and 'ignored_mask' is the mask of events which are to be ignored.
2117All are in hex format. Incorporation of 'mflags', 'mask' and 'ignored_mask'
2118provide information about flags and mask used in fanotify_mark
2119call [see fsnotify manpage for details].
2120
2121While the first three lines are mandatory and always printed, the rest is
2122optional and may be omitted if no marks created yet.
2123
2124Timerfd files
2125~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2126
2127::
2128
2129	pos:	0
2130	flags:	02
2131	mnt_id:	9
2132	ino:	63107
2133	clockid: 0
2134	ticks: 0
2135	settime flags: 01
2136	it_value: (0, 49406829)
2137	it_interval: (1, 0)
2138
2139where 'clockid' is the clock type and 'ticks' is the number of the timer expirations
2140that have occurred [see timerfd_create(2) for details]. 'settime flags' are
2141flags in octal form been used to setup the timer [see timerfd_settime(2) for
2142details]. 'it_value' is remaining time until the timer expiration.
2143'it_interval' is the interval for the timer. Note the timer might be set up
2144with TIMER_ABSTIME option which will be shown in 'settime flags', but 'it_value'
2145still exhibits timer's remaining time.
2146
2147DMA Buffer files
2148~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2149
2150::
2151
2152	pos:	0
2153	flags:	04002
2154	mnt_id:	9
2155	ino:	63107
2156	size:   32768
2157	count:  2
2158	exp_name:  system-heap
2159
2160where 'size' is the size of the DMA buffer in bytes. 'count' is the file count of
2161the DMA buffer file. 'exp_name' is the name of the DMA buffer exporter.
2162
2163VFIO Device files
2164~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2165
2166::
2167
2168	pos:    0
2169	flags:  02000002
2170	mnt_id: 17
2171	ino:    5122
2172	vfio-device-syspath: /sys/devices/pci0000:e0/0000:e0:01.1/0000:e1:00.0/0000:e2:05.0/0000:e8:00.0
2173
2174where 'vfio-device-syspath' is the sysfs path corresponding to the VFIO device
2175file.
2176
21773.9	/proc/<pid>/map_files - Information about memory mapped files
2178---------------------------------------------------------------------
2179This directory contains symbolic links which represent memory mapped files
2180the process is maintaining.  Example output::
2181
2182     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c600000-333c620000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2183     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c81f000-333c820000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2184     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c820000-333c821000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2185     | ...
2186     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 35d0421000-35d0422000 -> /usr/lib64/libselinux.so.1
2187     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 400000-41a000 -> /usr/bin/ls
2188
2189The name of a link represents the virtual memory bounds of a mapping, i.e.
2190vm_area_struct::vm_start-vm_area_struct::vm_end.
2191
2192The main purpose of the map_files is to retrieve a set of memory mapped
2193files in a fast way instead of parsing /proc/<pid>/maps or
2194/proc/<pid>/smaps, both of which contain many more records.  At the same
2195time one can open(2) mappings from the listings of two processes and
2196comparing their inode numbers to figure out which anonymous memory areas
2197are actually shared.
2198
21993.10	/proc/<pid>/timerslack_ns - Task timerslack value
2200---------------------------------------------------------
2201This file provides the value of the task's timerslack value in nanoseconds.
2202This value specifies an amount of time that normal timers may be deferred
2203in order to coalesce timers and avoid unnecessary wakeups.
2204
2205This allows a task's interactivity vs power consumption tradeoff to be
2206adjusted.
2207
2208Writing 0 to the file will set the task's timerslack to the default value.
2209
2210Valid values are from 0 - ULLONG_MAX
2211
2212An application setting the value must have PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_FSCREDS level
2213permissions on the task specified to change its timerslack_ns value.
2214
22153.11	/proc/<pid>/patch_state - Livepatch patch operation state
2216-----------------------------------------------------------------
2217When CONFIG_LIVEPATCH is enabled, this file displays the value of the
2218patch state for the task.
2219
2220A value of '-1' indicates that no patch is in transition.
2221
2222A value of '0' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is
2223unpatched.  If the patch is being enabled, then the task hasn't been
2224patched yet.  If the patch is being disabled, then the task has already
2225been unpatched.
2226
2227A value of '1' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is
2228patched.  If the patch is being enabled, then the task has already been
2229patched.  If the patch is being disabled, then the task hasn't been
2230unpatched yet.
2231
22323.12 /proc/<pid>/arch_status - task architecture specific status
2233-------------------------------------------------------------------
2234When CONFIG_PROC_PID_ARCH_STATUS is enabled, this file displays the
2235architecture specific status of the task.
2236
2237Example
2238~~~~~~~
2239
2240::
2241
2242 $ cat /proc/6753/arch_status
2243 AVX512_elapsed_ms:      8
2244
2245Description
2246~~~~~~~~~~~
2247
2248x86 specific entries
2249~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2250
2251AVX512_elapsed_ms
2252^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2253
2254  If AVX512 is supported on the machine, this entry shows the milliseconds
2255  elapsed since the last time AVX512 usage was recorded. The recording
2256  happens on a best effort basis when a task is scheduled out. This means
2257  that the value depends on two factors:
2258
2259    1) The time which the task spent on the CPU without being scheduled
2260       out. With CPU isolation and a single runnable task this can take
2261       several seconds.
2262
2263    2) The time since the task was scheduled out last. Depending on the
2264       reason for being scheduled out (time slice exhausted, syscall ...)
2265       this can be arbitrary long time.
2266
2267  As a consequence the value cannot be considered precise and authoritative
2268  information. The application which uses this information has to be aware
2269  of the overall scenario on the system in order to determine whether a
2270  task is a real AVX512 user or not. Precise information can be obtained
2271  with performance counters.
2272
2273  A special value of '-1' indicates that no AVX512 usage was recorded, thus
2274  the task is unlikely an AVX512 user, but depends on the workload and the
2275  scheduling scenario, it also could be a false negative mentioned above.
2276
22773.13 /proc/<pid>/fd - List of symlinks to open files
2278-------------------------------------------------------
2279This directory contains symbolic links which represent open files
2280the process is maintaining.  Example output::
2281
2282  lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 0 -> /dev/null
2283  l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 1 -> /dev/null
2284  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 10 -> 'socket:[12539]'
2285  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 11 -> 'socket:[12540]'
2286  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 12 -> 'socket:[12542]'
2287
2288The number of open files for the process is stored in 'size' member
2289of stat() output for /proc/<pid>/fd for fast access.
2290-------------------------------------------------------
2291
22923.14 /proc/<pid/ksm_stat - Information about the process's ksm status
2293---------------------------------------------------------------------
2294When CONFIG_KSM is enabled, each process has this file which displays
2295the information of ksm merging status.
2296
2297Example
2298~~~~~~~
2299
2300::
2301
2302    / # cat /proc/self/ksm_stat
2303    ksm_rmap_items 0
2304    ksm_zero_pages 0
2305    ksm_merging_pages 0
2306    ksm_process_profit 0
2307    ksm_merge_any: no
2308    ksm_mergeable: no
2309
2310Description
2311~~~~~~~~~~~
2312
2313ksm_rmap_items
2314^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2315
2316The number of ksm_rmap_item structures in use.  The structure
2317ksm_rmap_item stores the reverse mapping information for virtual
2318addresses.  KSM will generate a ksm_rmap_item for each ksm-scanned page of
2319the process.
2320
2321ksm_zero_pages
2322^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2323
2324When /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/use_zero_pages is enabled, it represent how many
2325empty pages are merged with kernel zero pages by KSM.
2326
2327ksm_merging_pages
2328^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2329
2330It represents how many pages of this process are involved in KSM merging
2331(not including ksm_zero_pages). It is the same with what
2332/proc/<pid>/ksm_merging_pages shows.
2333
2334ksm_process_profit
2335^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2336
2337The profit that KSM brings (Saved bytes). KSM can save memory by merging
2338identical pages, but also can consume additional memory, because it needs
2339to generate a number of rmap_items to save each scanned page's brief rmap
2340information. Some of these pages may be merged, but some may not be abled
2341to be merged after being checked several times, which are unprofitable
2342memory consumed.
2343
2344ksm_merge_any
2345^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2346
2347It specifies whether the process's 'mm is added by prctl() into the
2348candidate list of KSM or not, and if KSM scanning is fully enabled at
2349process level.
2350
2351ksm_mergeable
2352^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2353
2354It specifies whether any VMAs of the process''s mms are currently
2355applicable to KSM.
2356
2357More information about KSM can be found in
2358Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst.
2359
2360
2361Chapter 4: Configuring procfs
2362=============================
2363
23644.1	Mount options
2365---------------------
2366
2367The following mount options are supported:
2368
2369	=========	========================================================
2370	hidepid=	Set /proc/<pid>/ access mode.
2371	gid=		Set the group authorized to learn processes information.
2372	subset=		Show only the specified subset of procfs.
2373	pidns=		Specify a the namespace used by this procfs.
2374	=========	========================================================
2375
2376hidepid=off or hidepid=0 means classic mode - everybody may access all
2377/proc/<pid>/ directories (default).
2378
2379hidepid=noaccess or hidepid=1 means users may not access any /proc/<pid>/
2380directories but their own.  Sensitive files like cmdline, sched*, status are now
2381protected against other users.  This makes it impossible to learn whether any
2382user runs specific program (given the program doesn't reveal itself by its
2383behaviour).  As an additional bonus, as /proc/<pid>/cmdline is unaccessible for
2384other users, poorly written programs passing sensitive information via program
2385arguments are now protected against local eavesdroppers.
2386
2387hidepid=invisible or hidepid=2 means hidepid=1 plus all /proc/<pid>/ will be
2388fully invisible to other users.  It doesn't mean that it hides a fact whether a
2389process with a specific pid value exists (it can be learned by other means, e.g.
2390by "kill -0 $PID"), but it hides process's uid and gid, which may be learned by
2391stat()'ing /proc/<pid>/ otherwise.  It greatly complicates an intruder's task of
2392gathering information about running processes, whether some daemon runs with
2393elevated privileges, whether other user runs some sensitive program, whether
2394other users run any program at all, etc.
2395
2396hidepid=ptraceable or hidepid=4 means that procfs should only contain
2397/proc/<pid>/ directories that the caller can ptrace.
2398
2399gid= defines a group authorized to learn processes information otherwise
2400prohibited by hidepid=.  If you use some daemon like identd which needs to learn
2401information about processes information, just add identd to this group.
2402
2403subset=pid hides all top level files and directories in the procfs that
2404are not related to tasks.
2405
2406pidns= specifies a pid namespace (either as a string path to something like
2407`/proc/$pid/ns/pid`, or a file descriptor when using `FSCONFIG_SET_FD`) that
2408will be used by the procfs instance when translating pids. By default, procfs
2409will use the calling process's active pid namespace. Note that the pid
2410namespace of an existing procfs instance cannot be modified (attempting to do
2411so will give an `-EBUSY` error).
2412
2413Chapter 5: Filesystem behavior
2414==============================
2415
2416Originally, before the advent of pid namespace, procfs was a global file
2417system. It means that there was only one procfs instance in the system.
2418
2419When pid namespace was added, a separate procfs instance was mounted in
2420each pid namespace. So, procfs mount options are global among all
2421mountpoints within the same namespace::
2422
2423	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2424	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2425
2426	# strace -e mount mount -o hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2427	mount("proc", "/tmp/proc", "proc", 0, "hidepid=1") = 0
2428	+++ exited with 0 +++
2429
2430	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2431	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2432	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2433
2434and only after remounting procfs mount options will change at all
2435mountpoints::
2436
2437	# mount -o remount,hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2438
2439	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2440	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
2441	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
2442
2443This behavior is different from the behavior of other filesystems.
2444
2445The new procfs behavior is more like other filesystems. Each procfs mount
2446creates a new procfs instance. Mount options affect own procfs instance.
2447It means that it became possible to have several procfs instances
2448displaying tasks with different filtering options in one pid namespace::
2449
2450	# mount -o hidepid=invisible -t proc proc /proc
2451	# mount -o hidepid=noaccess -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2452	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2453	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=invisible 0 0
2454	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=noaccess 0 0
2455