xref: /linux/Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst (revision 8b00d6fe96960aaba1b923d4a8c1ddb173c9c1ff)
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
275 Threads                     number of threads
276 SigQ                        number of signals queued/max. number for queue
277 SigPnd                      bitmap of pending signals for the thread
278 ShdPnd                      bitmap of shared pending signals for the process
279 SigBlk                      bitmap of blocked signals
280 SigIgn                      bitmap of ignored signals
281 SigCgt                      bitmap of caught signals
282 CapInh                      bitmap of inheritable capabilities
283 CapPrm                      bitmap of permitted capabilities
284 CapEff                      bitmap of effective capabilities
285 CapBnd                      bitmap of capabilities bounding set
286 CapAmb                      bitmap of ambient capabilities
287 NoNewPrivs                  no_new_privs, like prctl(PR_GET_NO_NEW_PRIV, ...)
288 Seccomp                     seccomp mode, like prctl(PR_GET_SECCOMP, ...)
289 Speculation_Store_Bypass    speculative store bypass mitigation status
290 SpeculationIndirectBranch   indirect branch speculation mode
291 Cpus_allowed                mask of CPUs on which this process may run
292 Cpus_allowed_list           Same as previous, but in "list format"
293 Mems_allowed                mask of memory nodes allowed to this process
294 Mems_allowed_list           Same as previous, but in "list format"
295 voluntary_ctxt_switches     number of voluntary context switches
296 nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches  number of non voluntary context switches
297 ==========================  ===================================================
298
299
300.. table:: Table 1-3: Contents of the statm fields (as of 2.6.8-rc3)
301
302 ======== ===============================	==============================
303 Field    Content
304 ======== ===============================	==============================
305 size     total program size (pages)		(same as VmSize in status)
306 resident size of memory portions (pages)	(same as VmRSS in status)
307 shared   number of pages that are shared	(i.e. backed by a file, same
308						as RssFile+RssShmem in status)
309 trs      number of pages that are 'code'	(not including libs; broken,
310						includes data segment)
311 lrs      number of pages of library		(always 0 on 2.6)
312 drs      number of pages of data/stack		(including libs; broken,
313						includes library text)
314 dt       number of dirty pages			(always 0 on 2.6)
315 ======== ===============================	==============================
316
317
318.. table:: Table 1-4: Contents of the stat fields (as of 2.6.30-rc7)
319
320  ============= ===============================================================
321  Field         Content
322  ============= ===============================================================
323  pid           process id
324  tcomm         filename of the executable
325  state         state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an
326                uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped)
327  ppid          process id of the parent process
328  pgrp          pgrp of the process
329  sid           session id
330  tty_nr        tty the process uses
331  tty_pgrp      pgrp of the tty
332  flags         task flags
333  min_flt       number of minor faults
334  cmin_flt      number of minor faults with child's
335  maj_flt       number of major faults
336  cmaj_flt      number of major faults with child's
337  utime         user mode jiffies
338  stime         kernel mode jiffies
339  cutime        user mode jiffies with child's
340  cstime        kernel mode jiffies with child's
341  priority      priority level
342  nice          nice level
343  num_threads   number of threads
344  it_real_value	(obsolete, always 0)
345  start_time    time the process started after system boot
346  vsize         virtual memory size
347  rss           resident set memory size
348  rsslim        current limit in bytes on the rss
349  start_code    address above which program text can run
350  end_code      address below which program text can run
351  start_stack   address of the start of the main process stack
352  esp           current value of ESP
353  eip           current value of EIP
354  pending       bitmap of pending signals
355  blocked       bitmap of blocked signals
356  sigign        bitmap of ignored signals
357  sigcatch      bitmap of caught signals
358  0		(place holder, used to be the wchan address,
359		use /proc/PID/wchan instead)
360  0             (place holder)
361  0             (place holder)
362  exit_signal   signal to send to parent thread on exit
363  task_cpu      which CPU the task is scheduled on
364  rt_priority   realtime priority
365  policy        scheduling policy (man sched_setscheduler)
366  blkio_ticks   time spent waiting for block IO
367  gtime         guest time of the task in jiffies
368  cgtime        guest time of the task children in jiffies
369  start_data    address above which program data+bss is placed
370  end_data      address below which program data+bss is placed
371  start_brk     address above which program heap can be expanded with brk()
372  arg_start     address above which program command line is placed
373  arg_end       address below which program command line is placed
374  env_start     address above which program environment is placed
375  env_end       address below which program environment is placed
376  exit_code     the thread's exit_code in the form reported by the waitpid
377		system call
378  ============= ===============================================================
379
380The /proc/PID/maps file contains the currently mapped memory regions and
381their access permissions.
382
383The format is::
384
385    address           perms offset  dev   inode      pathname
386
387    08048000-08049000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8312       /opt/test
388    08049000-0804a000 rw-p 00001000 03:00 8312       /opt/test
389    0804a000-0806b000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [heap]
390    a7cb1000-a7cb2000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0
391    a7cb2000-a7eb2000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
392    a7eb2000-a7eb3000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0
393    a7eb3000-a7ed5000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
394    a7ed5000-a8008000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
395    a8008000-a800a000 r--p 00133000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
396    a800a000-a800b000 rw-p 00135000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
397    a800b000-a800e000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
398    a800e000-a8022000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
399    a8022000-a8023000 r--p 00013000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
400    a8023000-a8024000 rw-p 00014000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
401    a8024000-a8027000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
402    a8027000-a8043000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
403    a8043000-a8044000 r--p 0001b000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
404    a8044000-a8045000 rw-p 0001c000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
405    aff35000-aff4a000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [stack]
406    ffffe000-fffff000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [vdso]
407
408where "address" is the address space in the process that it occupies, "perms"
409is a set of permissions::
410
411 r = read
412 w = write
413 x = execute
414 s = shared
415 p = private (copy on write)
416
417"offset" is the offset into the mapping, "dev" is the device (major:minor), and
418"inode" is the inode  on that device.  0 indicates that  no inode is associated
419with the memory region, as the case would be with BSS (uninitialized data).
420The "pathname" shows the name associated file for this mapping.  If the mapping
421is not associated with a file:
422
423 ===================        ===========================================
424 [heap]                     the heap of the program
425 [stack]                    the stack of the main process
426 [vdso]                     the "virtual dynamic shared object",
427                            the kernel system call handler
428 [anon:<name>]              a private anonymous mapping that has been
429                            named by userspace
430 [anon_shmem:<name>]        an anonymous shared memory mapping that has
431                            been named by userspace
432 ===================        ===========================================
433
434 or if empty, the mapping is anonymous.
435
436Starting with 6.11 kernel, /proc/PID/maps provides an alternative
437ioctl()-based API that gives ability to flexibly and efficiently query and
438filter individual VMAs. This interface is binary and is meant for more
439efficient and easy programmatic use. `struct procmap_query`, defined in
440linux/fs.h UAPI header, serves as an input/output argument to the
441`PROCMAP_QUERY` ioctl() command. See comments in linus/fs.h UAPI header for
442details on query semantics, supported flags, data returned, and general API
443usage information.
444
445The /proc/PID/smaps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory
446consumption for each of the process's mappings. For each mapping (aka Virtual
447Memory Area, or VMA) there is a series of lines such as the following::
448
449    08048000-080bc000 r-xp 00000000 03:02 13130      /bin/bash
450
451    Size:               1084 kB
452    KernelPageSize:        4 kB
453    MMUPageSize:           4 kB
454    Rss:                 892 kB
455    Pss:                 374 kB
456    Pss_Dirty:             0 kB
457    Shared_Clean:        892 kB
458    Shared_Dirty:          0 kB
459    Private_Clean:         0 kB
460    Private_Dirty:         0 kB
461    Referenced:          892 kB
462    Anonymous:             0 kB
463    KSM:                   0 kB
464    LazyFree:              0 kB
465    AnonHugePages:         0 kB
466    ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
467    Shared_Hugetlb:        0 kB
468    Private_Hugetlb:       0 kB
469    Swap:                  0 kB
470    SwapPss:               0 kB
471    KernelPageSize:        4 kB
472    MMUPageSize:           4 kB
473    Locked:                0 kB
474    THPeligible:           0
475    VmFlags: rd ex mr mw me dw
476
477The first of these lines shows the same information as is displayed for
478the mapping in /proc/PID/maps.  Following lines show the size of the
479mapping (size); the size of each page allocated when backing a VMA
480(KernelPageSize), which is usually the same as the size in the page table
481entries; the page size used by the MMU when backing a VMA (in most cases,
482the same as KernelPageSize); the amount of the mapping that is currently
483resident in RAM (RSS); the process's proportional share of this mapping
484(PSS); and the number of clean and dirty shared and private pages in the
485mapping.
486
487The "proportional set size" (PSS) of a process is the count of pages it has
488in memory, where each page is divided by the number of processes sharing it.
489So if a process has 1000 pages all to itself, and 1000 shared with one other
490process, its PSS will be 1500.  "Pss_Dirty" is the portion of PSS which
491consists of dirty pages.  ("Pss_Clean" is not included, but it can be
492calculated by subtracting "Pss_Dirty" from "Pss".)
493
494Traditionally, a page is accounted as "private" if it is mapped exactly once,
495and a page is accounted as "shared" when mapped multiple times, even when
496mapped in the same process multiple times. Note that this accounting is
497independent of MAP_SHARED.
498
499In some kernel configurations, the semantics of pages part of a larger
500allocation (e.g., THP) can differ: a page is accounted as "private" if all
501pages part of the corresponding large allocation are *certainly* mapped in the
502same process, even if the page is mapped multiple times in that process. A
503page is accounted as "shared" if any page page of the larger allocation
504is *maybe* mapped in a different process. In some cases, a large allocation
505might be treated as "maybe mapped by multiple processes" even though this
506is no longer the case.
507
508Some kernel configurations do not track the precise number of times a page part
509of a larger allocation is mapped. In this case, when calculating the PSS, the
510average number of mappings per page in this larger allocation might be used
511as an approximation for the number of mappings of a page. The PSS calculation
512will be imprecise in this case.
513
514"Referenced" indicates the amount of memory currently marked as referenced or
515accessed.
516
517"Anonymous" shows the amount of memory that does not belong to any file.  Even
518a mapping associated with a file may contain anonymous pages: when MAP_PRIVATE
519and a page is modified, the file page is replaced by a private anonymous copy.
520
521"KSM" reports how many of the pages are KSM pages. Note that KSM-placed zeropages
522are not included, only actual KSM pages.
523
524"LazyFree" shows the amount of memory which is marked by madvise(MADV_FREE).
525The memory isn't freed immediately with madvise(). It's freed in memory
526pressure if the memory is clean. Please note that the printed value might
527be lower than the real value due to optimizations used in the current
528implementation. If this is not desirable please file a bug report.
529
530"AnonHugePages" shows the amount of memory backed by transparent hugepage.
531
532"ShmemPmdMapped" shows the amount of shared (shmem/tmpfs) memory backed by
533huge pages.
534
535"Shared_Hugetlb" and "Private_Hugetlb" show the amounts of memory backed by
536hugetlbfs page which is *not* counted in "RSS" or "PSS" field for historical
537reasons. And these are not included in {Shared,Private}_{Clean,Dirty} field.
538
539"Swap" shows how much would-be-anonymous memory is also used, but out on swap.
540
541For shmem mappings, "Swap" includes also the size of the mapped (and not
542replaced by copy-on-write) part of the underlying shmem object out on swap.
543"SwapPss" shows proportional swap share of this mapping. Unlike "Swap", this
544does not take into account swapped out page of underlying shmem objects.
545"Locked" indicates whether the mapping is locked in memory or not.
546
547"THPeligible" indicates whether the mapping is eligible for allocating
548naturally aligned THP pages of any currently enabled size. 1 if true, 0
549otherwise.
550
551"VmFlags" field deserves a separate description. This member represents the
552kernel flags associated with the particular virtual memory area in two letter
553encoded manner. The codes are the following:
554
555    ==    =======================================
556    rd    readable
557    wr    writeable
558    ex    executable
559    sh    shared
560    mr    may read
561    mw    may write
562    me    may execute
563    ms    may share
564    gd    stack segment growns down
565    pf    pure PFN range
566    lo    pages are locked in memory
567    io    memory mapped I/O area
568    sr    sequential read advise provided
569    rr    random read advise provided
570    dc    do not copy area on fork
571    de    do not expand area on remapping
572    ac    area is accountable
573    nr    swap space is not reserved for the area
574    ht    area uses huge tlb pages
575    sf    synchronous page fault
576    ar    architecture specific flag
577    wf    wipe on fork
578    dd    do not include area into core dump
579    sd    soft dirty flag
580    mm    mixed map area
581    hg    huge page advise flag
582    nh    no huge page advise flag
583    mg    mergeable advise flag
584    bt    arm64 BTI guarded page
585    mt    arm64 MTE allocation tags are enabled
586    um    userfaultfd missing tracking
587    uw    userfaultfd wr-protect tracking
588    ui    userfaultfd minor fault
589    ss    shadow/guarded control stack page
590    sl    sealed
591    lf    lock on fault pages
592    dp    always lazily freeable mapping
593    ==    =======================================
594
595Note that there is no guarantee that every flag and associated mnemonic will
596be present in all further kernel releases. Things get changed, the flags may
597be vanished or the reverse -- new added. Interpretation of their meaning
598might change in future as well. So each consumer of these flags has to
599follow each specific kernel version for the exact semantic.
600
601This file is only present if the CONFIG_MMU kernel configuration option is
602enabled.
603
604Note: reading /proc/PID/maps or /proc/PID/smaps is inherently racy (consistent
605output can be achieved only in the single read call).
606
607This typically manifests when doing partial reads of these files while the
608memory map is being modified.  Despite the races, we do provide the following
609guarantees:
610
6111) The mapped addresses never go backwards, which implies no two
612   regions will ever overlap.
6132) If there is something at a given vaddr during the entirety of the
614   life of the smaps/maps walk, there will be some output for it.
615
616The /proc/PID/smaps_rollup file includes the same fields as /proc/PID/smaps,
617but their values are the sums of the corresponding values for all mappings of
618the process.  Additionally, it contains these fields:
619
620- Pss_Anon
621- Pss_File
622- Pss_Shmem
623
624They represent the proportional shares of anonymous, file, and shmem pages, as
625described for smaps above.  These fields are omitted in smaps since each
626mapping identifies the type (anon, file, or shmem) of all pages it contains.
627Thus all information in smaps_rollup can be derived from smaps, but at a
628significantly higher cost.
629
630The /proc/PID/clear_refs is used to reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG
631bits on both physical and virtual pages associated with a process, and the
632soft-dirty bit on pte (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/soft-dirty.rst
633for details).
634To clear the bits for all the pages associated with the process::
635
636    > echo 1 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
637
638To clear the bits for the anonymous pages associated with the process::
639
640    > echo 2 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
641
642To clear the bits for the file mapped pages associated with the process::
643
644    > echo 3 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
645
646To clear the soft-dirty bit::
647
648    > echo 4 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
649
650To reset the peak resident set size ("high water mark") to the process's
651current value::
652
653    > echo 5 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
654
655Any other value written to /proc/PID/clear_refs will have no effect.
656
657The /proc/pid/pagemap gives the PFN, which can be used to find the pageflags
658using /proc/kpageflags and number of times a page is mapped using
659/proc/kpagecount. For detailed explanation, see
660Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst.
661
662The /proc/pid/numa_maps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory
663locality and binding policy, as well as the memory usage (in pages) of
664each mapping. The output follows a general format where mapping details get
665summarized separated by blank spaces, one mapping per each file line::
666
667    address   policy    mapping details
668
669    00400000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app mapped=1 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
670    00600000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
671    3206000000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so mapped=26 mapmax=6 N0=24 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
672    320621f000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
673    3206220000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
674    3206221000 default anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
675    3206800000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so mapped=59 mapmax=21 active=55 N0=41 N3=18 kernelpagesize_kB=4
676    320698b000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so
677    3206b8a000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=2 dirty=2 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
678    3206b8e000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
679    3206b8f000 default anon=3 dirty=3 active=1 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
680    7f4dc10a2000 default anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
681    7f4dc10b4000 default anon=2 dirty=2 active=1 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
682    7f4dc1200000 default file=/anon_hugepage\040(deleted) huge anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=2048
683    7fff335f0000 default stack anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
684    7fff3369d000 default mapped=1 mapmax=35 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
685
686Where:
687
688"address" is the starting address for the mapping;
689
690"policy" reports the NUMA memory policy set for the mapping (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numa_memory_policy.rst);
691
692"mapping details" summarizes mapping data such as mapping type, page usage counters,
693node locality page counters (N0 == node0, N1 == node1, ...) and the kernel page
694size, in KB, that is backing the mapping up.
695
696Note that some kernel configurations do not track the precise number of times
697a page part of a larger allocation (e.g., THP) is mapped. In these
698configurations, "mapmax" might corresponds to the average number of mappings
699per page in such a larger allocation instead.
700
7011.2 Kernel data
702---------------
703
704Similar to  the  process entries, the kernel data files give information about
705the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in
706/proc and  are  listed  in Table 1-5. Not all of these will be present in your
707system. It  depends  on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which
708files are there, and which are missing.
709
710.. table:: Table 1-5: Kernel info in /proc
711
712 ============ ===============================================================
713 File         Content
714 ============ ===============================================================
715 allocinfo    Memory allocations profiling information
716 apm          Advanced power management info
717 bootconfig   Kernel command line obtained from boot config,
718 	      and, if there were kernel parameters from the
719	      boot loader, a "# Parameters from bootloader:"
720	      line followed by a line containing those
721	      parameters prefixed by "# ".			(5.5)
722 buddyinfo    Kernel memory allocator information (see text)	(2.5)
723 bus          Directory containing bus specific information
724 cmdline      Kernel command line, both from bootloader and embedded
725              in the kernel image
726 cpuinfo      Info about the CPU
727 devices      Available devices (block and character)
728 dma          Used DMS channels
729 filesystems  Supported filesystems
730 driver       Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc	(2.4)
731 execdomains  Execdomains, related to security			(2.4)
732 fb 	      Frame Buffer devices				(2.4)
733 fs 	      File system parameters, currently nfs/exports	(2.4)
734 ide          Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem
735 interrupts   Interrupt usage
736 iomem 	      Memory map					(2.4)
737 ioports      I/O port usage
738 irq 	      Masks for irq to cpu affinity			(2.4)(smp?)
739 isapnp       ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info				(2.4)
740 kcore        Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4))
741 kmsg         Kernel messages
742 ksyms        Kernel symbol table
743 loadavg      Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes;
744                number of processes currently runnable (running or on ready queue);
745                total number of processes in system;
746                last pid created.
747                All fields are separated by one space except "number of
748                processes currently runnable" and "total number of processes
749                in system", which are separated by a slash ('/'). Example:
750                0.61 0.61 0.55 3/828 22084
751 locks        Kernel locks
752 meminfo      Memory info
753 misc         Miscellaneous
754 modules      List of loaded modules
755 mounts       Mounted filesystems
756 net          Networking info (see text)
757 pagetypeinfo Additional page allocator information (see text)  (2.5)
758 partitions   Table of partitions known to the system
759 pci 	      Deprecated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/,
760              decoupled by lspci				(2.4)
761 rtc          Real time clock
762 scsi         SCSI info (see text)
763 slabinfo     Slab pool info
764 softirqs     softirq usage
765 stat         Overall statistics
766 swaps        Swap space utilization
767 sys          See chapter 2
768 sysvipc      Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm)		(2.4)
769 tty 	      Info of tty drivers
770 uptime       Wall clock since boot, combined idle time of all cpus
771 version      Kernel version
772 video 	      bttv info of video resources			(2.4)
773 vmallocinfo  Show vmalloced areas
774 ============ ===============================================================
775
776You can,  for  example,  check  which interrupts are currently in use and what
777they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts::
778
779  > cat /proc/interrupts
780             CPU0
781    0:    8728810          XT-PIC  timer
782    1:        895          XT-PIC  keyboard
783    2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
784    3:     531695          XT-PIC  aha152x
785    4:    2014133          XT-PIC  serial
786    5:      44401          XT-PIC  pcnet_cs
787    8:          2          XT-PIC  rtc
788   11:          8          XT-PIC  i82365
789   12:     182918          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse
790   13:          1          XT-PIC  fpu
791   14:    1232265          XT-PIC  ide0
792   15:          7          XT-PIC  ide1
793  NMI:          0
794
795In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the
796output of a SMP machine)::
797
798  > cat /proc/interrupts
799
800             CPU0       CPU1
801    0:    1243498    1214548    IO-APIC-edge  timer
802    1:       8949       8958    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
803    2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
804    5:      11286      10161    IO-APIC-edge  soundblaster
805    8:          1          0    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
806    9:      27422      27407    IO-APIC-edge  3c503
807   12:     113645     113873    IO-APIC-edge  PS/2 Mouse
808   13:          0          0          XT-PIC  fpu
809   14:      22491      24012    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
810   15:       2183       2415    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
811   17:      30564      30414   IO-APIC-level  eth0
812   18:        177        164   IO-APIC-level  bttv
813  NMI:    2457961    2457959
814  LOC:    2457882    2457881
815  ERR:       2155
816
817NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI
818(Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.
819
820LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.
821
822ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that
823connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected,
824the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big
825problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.
826
827In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again.  This time the goal was for
828/proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not
829just those considered 'most important'.  The new vectors are:
830
831THR
832  interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter
833  (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds
834  a configurable threshold.  Only available on some systems.
835
836TRM
837  a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold
838  has been exceeded for the CPU.  This interrupt may also be generated
839  when the temperature drops back to normal.
840
841SPU
842  a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered
843  by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC.  Hence
844  the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from.
845  For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector
846  of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.
847
848RES, CAL, TLB
849  rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are
850  sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS.  Typically,
851  their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to
852  determine the occurrence of interrupts of the given type.
853
854The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevant.  For example,
855the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms.  Others are
856suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor.  As of this writing, only
857i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.
858
859Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4.
860It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity. This means that you can "hook" an
861IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the
862irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and two files; default_smp_affinity and
863prof_cpu_mask.
864
865For example::
866
867  > ls /proc/irq/
868  0  10  12  14  16  18  2  4  6  8  prof_cpu_mask
869  1  11  13  15  17  19  3  5  7  9  default_smp_affinity
870  > ls /proc/irq/0/
871  smp_affinity
872
873smp_affinity is a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the
874IRQ. You can set it by doing::
875
876  > echo 1 > /proc/irq/10/smp_affinity
877
878This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo
8795 which means that only the first and third CPU can handle the IRQ.
880
881The contents of each smp_affinity file is the same by default::
882
883  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity
884  ffffffff
885
886There is an alternate interface, smp_affinity_list which allows specifying
887a CPU range instead of a bitmask::
888
889  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity_list
890  1024-1031
891
892The default_smp_affinity mask applies to all non-active IRQs, which are the
893IRQs which have not yet been allocated/activated, and hence which lack a
894/proc/irq/[0-9]* directory.
895
896The node file on an SMP system shows the node to which the device using the IRQ
897reports itself as being attached. This hardware locality information does not
898include information about any possible driver locality preference.
899
900prof_cpu_mask specifies which CPUs are to be profiled by the system wide
901profiler. Default value is ffffffff (all CPUs if there are only 32 of them).
902
903The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin
904between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has
905more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the
906best choice for almost everyone.  [Note this applies only to those IO-APIC's
907that support "Round Robin" interrupt distribution.]
908
909There are  three  more  important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys.
910The general  rule  is  that  the  contents,  or  even  the  existence of these
911directories, depend  on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the
912directory scsi  may  not  exist. The same is true with the net, which is there
913only when networking support is present in the running kernel.
914
915The slabinfo  file  gives  information  about  memory usage at the slab level.
916Linux uses  slab  pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2.
917Commonly used  objects  have  their  own  slab  pool (such as network buffers,
918directory cache, and so on).
919
920::
921
922    > cat /proc/buddyinfo
923
924    Node 0, zone      DMA      0      4      5      4      4      3 ...
925    Node 0, zone   Normal      1      0      0      1    101      8 ...
926    Node 0, zone  HighMem      2      0      0      1      1      0 ...
927
928External fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a
929useful tool for helping diagnose these problems.  Buddyinfo will give you a
930clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous
931allocation failed.
932
933Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are
934available.  In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in
935ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE
936available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc...
937
938More information relevant to external fragmentation can be found in
939pagetypeinfo::
940
941    > cat /proc/pagetypeinfo
942    Page block order: 9
943    Pages per block:  512
944
945    Free pages count per migrate type at order       0      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9     10
946    Node    0, zone      DMA, type    Unmovable      0      0      0      1      1      1      1      1      1      1      0
947    Node    0, zone      DMA, type  Reclaimable      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
948    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Movable      1      1      2      1      2      1      1      0      1      0      2
949    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Reserve      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      1      0
950    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Isolate      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
951    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type    Unmovable    103     54     77      1      1      1     11      8      7      1      9
952    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type  Reclaimable      0      0      2      1      0      0      0      0      1      0      0
953    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Movable    169    152    113     91     77     54     39     13      6      1    452
954    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Reserve      1      2      2      2      2      0      1      1      1      1      0
955    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Isolate      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
956
957    Number of blocks type     Unmovable  Reclaimable      Movable      Reserve      Isolate
958    Node 0, zone      DMA            2            0            5            1            0
959    Node 0, zone    DMA32           41            6          967            2            0
960
961Fragmentation avoidance in the kernel works by grouping pages of different
962migrate types into the same contiguous regions of memory called page blocks.
963A page block is typically the size of the default hugepage size, e.g. 2MB on
964X86-64. By keeping pages grouped based on their ability to move, the kernel
965can reclaim pages within a page block to satisfy a high-order allocation.
966
967The pagetypinfo begins with information on the size of a page block. It
968then gives the same type of information as buddyinfo except broken down
969by migrate-type and finishes with details on how many page blocks of each
970type exist.
971
972If min_free_kbytes has been tuned correctly (recommendations made by hugeadm
973from libhugetlbfs https://github.com/libhugetlbfs/libhugetlbfs/), one can
974make an estimate of the likely number of huge pages that can be allocated
975at a given point in time. All the "Movable" blocks should be allocatable
976unless memory has been mlock()'d. Some of the Reclaimable blocks should
977also be allocatable although a lot of filesystem metadata may have to be
978reclaimed to achieve this.
979
980
981allocinfo
982~~~~~~~~~
983
984Provides information about memory allocations at all locations in the code
985base. Each allocation in the code is identified by its source file, line
986number, module (if originates from a loadable module) and the function calling
987the allocation. The number of bytes allocated and number of calls at each
988location are reported. The first line indicates the version of the file, the
989second line is the header listing fields in the file.
990
991Example output.
992
993::
994
995    > tail -n +3 /proc/allocinfo | sort -rn
996   127664128    31168 mm/page_ext.c:270 func:alloc_page_ext
997    56373248     4737 mm/slub.c:2259 func:alloc_slab_page
998    14880768     3633 mm/readahead.c:247 func:page_cache_ra_unbounded
999    14417920     3520 mm/mm_init.c:2530 func:alloc_large_system_hash
1000    13377536      234 block/blk-mq.c:3421 func:blk_mq_alloc_rqs
1001    11718656     2861 mm/filemap.c:1919 func:__filemap_get_folio
1002     9192960     2800 kernel/fork.c:307 func:alloc_thread_stack_node
1003     4206592        4 net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c:2567 func:nf_ct_alloc_hashtable
1004     4136960     1010 drivers/staging/ctagmod/ctagmod.c:20 [ctagmod] func:ctagmod_start
1005     3940352      962 mm/memory.c:4214 func:alloc_anon_folio
1006     2894464    22613 fs/kernfs/dir.c:615 func:__kernfs_new_node
1007     ...
1008
1009
1010meminfo
1011~~~~~~~
1012
1013Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory.  This
1014varies by architecture and compile options.  Some of the counters reported
1015here overlap.  The memory reported by the non overlapping counters may not
1016add up to the overall memory usage and the difference for some workloads
1017can be substantial.  In many cases there are other means to find out
1018additional memory using subsystem specific interfaces, for instance
1019/proc/net/sockstat for TCP memory allocations.
1020
1021Example output. You may not have all of these fields.
1022
1023::
1024
1025    > cat /proc/meminfo
1026
1027    MemTotal:       32858820 kB
1028    MemFree:        21001236 kB
1029    MemAvailable:   27214312 kB
1030    Buffers:          581092 kB
1031    Cached:          5587612 kB
1032    SwapCached:            0 kB
1033    Active:          3237152 kB
1034    Inactive:        7586256 kB
1035    Active(anon):      94064 kB
1036    Inactive(anon):  4570616 kB
1037    Active(file):    3143088 kB
1038    Inactive(file):  3015640 kB
1039    Unevictable:           0 kB
1040    Mlocked:               0 kB
1041    SwapTotal:             0 kB
1042    SwapFree:              0 kB
1043    Zswap:              1904 kB
1044    Zswapped:           7792 kB
1045    Dirty:                12 kB
1046    Writeback:             0 kB
1047    AnonPages:       4654780 kB
1048    Mapped:           266244 kB
1049    Shmem:              9976 kB
1050    KReclaimable:     517708 kB
1051    Slab:             660044 kB
1052    SReclaimable:     517708 kB
1053    SUnreclaim:       142336 kB
1054    KernelStack:       11168 kB
1055    PageTables:        20540 kB
1056    SecPageTables:         0 kB
1057    NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
1058    Bounce:                0 kB
1059    WritebackTmp:          0 kB
1060    CommitLimit:    16429408 kB
1061    Committed_AS:    7715148 kB
1062    VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
1063    VmallocUsed:       40444 kB
1064    VmallocChunk:          0 kB
1065    Percpu:            29312 kB
1066    EarlyMemtestBad:       0 kB
1067    HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
1068    AnonHugePages:   4149248 kB
1069    ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
1070    ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
1071    FileHugePages:         0 kB
1072    FilePmdMapped:         0 kB
1073    CmaTotal:              0 kB
1074    CmaFree:               0 kB
1075    Unaccepted:            0 kB
1076    Balloon:               0 kB
1077    HugePages_Total:       0
1078    HugePages_Free:        0
1079    HugePages_Rsvd:        0
1080    HugePages_Surp:        0
1081    Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
1082    Hugetlb:               0 kB
1083    DirectMap4k:      401152 kB
1084    DirectMap2M:    10008576 kB
1085    DirectMap1G:    24117248 kB
1086
1087MemTotal
1088              Total usable RAM (i.e. physical RAM minus a few reserved
1089              bits and the kernel binary code)
1090MemFree
1091              Total free RAM. On highmem systems, the sum of LowFree+HighFree
1092MemAvailable
1093              An estimate of how much memory is available for starting new
1094              applications, without swapping. Calculated from MemFree,
1095              SReclaimable, the size of the file LRU lists, and the low
1096              watermarks in each zone.
1097              The estimate takes into account that the system needs some
1098              page cache to function well, and that not all reclaimable
1099              slab will be reclaimable, due to items being in use. The
1100              impact of those factors will vary from system to system.
1101Buffers
1102              Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
1103              shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
1104Cached
1105              In-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
1106              pagecache) as well as tmpfs & shmem.
1107              Doesn't include SwapCached.
1108SwapCached
1109              Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but
1110              still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it
1111              doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already
1112              in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
1113Active
1114              Memory that has been used more recently and usually not
1115              reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
1116Inactive
1117              Memory which has been less recently used.  It is more
1118              eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
1119Unevictable
1120              Memory allocated for userspace which cannot be reclaimed, such
1121              as mlocked pages, ramfs backing pages, secret memfd pages etc.
1122Mlocked
1123              Memory locked with mlock().
1124HighTotal, HighFree
1125              Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory.
1126              Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or
1127              for the pagecache.  The kernel must use tricks to access
1128              this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
1129LowTotal, LowFree
1130              Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that
1131              highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the
1132              kernel's use for its own data structures.  Among many
1133              other things, it is where everything from the Slab is
1134              allocated.  Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
1135SwapTotal
1136              total amount of swap space available
1137SwapFree
1138              Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily
1139              on the disk
1140Zswap
1141              Memory consumed by the zswap backend (compressed size)
1142Zswapped
1143              Amount of anonymous memory stored in zswap (original size)
1144Dirty
1145              Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
1146Writeback
1147              Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
1148AnonPages
1149              Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables. Note that
1150              some kernel configurations might consider all pages part of a
1151              larger allocation (e.g., THP) as "mapped", as soon as a single
1152              page is mapped.
1153Mapped
1154              files which have been mmapped, such as libraries. Note that some
1155              kernel configurations might consider all pages part of a larger
1156              allocation (e.g., THP) as "mapped", as soon as a single page is
1157              mapped.
1158Shmem
1159              Total memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs
1160KReclaimable
1161              Kernel allocations that the kernel will attempt to reclaim
1162              under memory pressure. Includes SReclaimable (below), and other
1163              direct allocations with a shrinker.
1164Slab
1165              in-kernel data structures cache
1166SReclaimable
1167              Part of Slab, that might be reclaimed, such as caches
1168SUnreclaim
1169              Part of Slab, that cannot be reclaimed on memory pressure
1170KernelStack
1171              Memory consumed by the kernel stacks of all tasks
1172PageTables
1173              Memory consumed by userspace page tables
1174SecPageTables
1175              Memory consumed by secondary page tables, this currently includes
1176              KVM mmu and IOMMU allocations on x86 and arm64.
1177NFS_Unstable
1178              Always zero. Previously counted pages which had been written to
1179              the server, but has not been committed to stable storage.
1180Bounce
1181              Always zero. Previously memory used for block device
1182              "bounce buffers".
1183WritebackTmp
1184              Always zero. Previously memory used by FUSE for temporary
1185              writeback buffers.
1186CommitLimit
1187              Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'),
1188              this is the total amount of  memory currently available to
1189              be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to
1190              if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in
1191              'vm.overcommit_memory').
1192
1193              The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula::
1194
1195                CommitLimit = ([total RAM pages] - [total huge TLB pages]) *
1196                               overcommit_ratio / 100 + [total swap pages]
1197
1198              For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G
1199              of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would
1200              yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
1201
1202              For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation
1203              in mm/overcommit-accounting.
1204Committed_AS
1205              The amount of memory presently allocated on the system.
1206              The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which
1207              has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been
1208              "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G
1209              of memory, but only touches 300M of it will show up as
1210              using 1G. This 1G is memory which has been "committed" to
1211              by the VM and can be used at any time by the allocating
1212              application. With strict overcommit enabled on the system
1213              (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'), allocations which would
1214              exceed the CommitLimit (detailed above) will not be permitted.
1215              This is useful if one needs to guarantee that processes will
1216              not fail due to lack of memory once that memory has been
1217              successfully allocated.
1218VmallocTotal
1219              total size of vmalloc virtual address space
1220VmallocUsed
1221              amount of vmalloc area which is used
1222VmallocChunk
1223              largest contiguous block of vmalloc area which is free
1224Percpu
1225              Memory allocated to the percpu allocator used to back percpu
1226              allocations. This stat excludes the cost of metadata.
1227EarlyMemtestBad
1228              The amount of RAM/memory in kB, that was identified as corrupted
1229              by early memtest. If memtest was not run, this field will not
1230              be displayed at all. Size is never rounded down to 0 kB.
1231              That means if 0 kB is reported, you can safely assume
1232              there was at least one pass of memtest and none of the passes
1233              found a single faulty byte of RAM.
1234HardwareCorrupted
1235              The amount of RAM/memory in KB, the kernel identifies as
1236              corrupted.
1237AnonHugePages
1238              Non-file backed huge pages mapped into userspace page tables
1239ShmemHugePages
1240              Memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs allocated
1241              with huge pages
1242ShmemPmdMapped
1243              Shared memory mapped into userspace with huge pages
1244FileHugePages
1245              Memory used for filesystem data (page cache) allocated
1246              with huge pages
1247FilePmdMapped
1248              Page cache mapped into userspace with huge pages
1249CmaTotal
1250              Memory reserved for the Contiguous Memory Allocator (CMA)
1251CmaFree
1252              Free remaining memory in the CMA reserves
1253Unaccepted
1254              Memory that has not been accepted by the guest
1255Balloon
1256              Memory returned to Host by VM Balloon Drivers
1257HugePages_Total, HugePages_Free, HugePages_Rsvd, HugePages_Surp, Hugepagesize, Hugetlb
1258              See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst.
1259DirectMap4k, DirectMap2M, DirectMap1G
1260              Breakdown of page table sizes used in the kernel's
1261              identity mapping of RAM
1262
1263vmallocinfo
1264~~~~~~~~~~~
1265
1266Provides information about vmalloced/vmaped areas. One line per area,
1267containing the virtual address range of the area, size in bytes,
1268caller information of the creator, and optional information depending
1269on the kind of area:
1270
1271 ==========  ===================================================
1272 pages=nr    number of pages
1273 phys=addr   if a physical address was specified
1274 ioremap     I/O mapping (ioremap() and friends)
1275 vmalloc     vmalloc() area
1276 vmap        vmap()ed pages
1277 user        VM_USERMAP area
1278 vpages      buffer for pages pointers was vmalloced (huge area)
1279 N<node>=nr  (Only on NUMA kernels)
1280             Number of pages allocated on memory node <node>
1281 ==========  ===================================================
1282
1283::
1284
1285    > cat /proc/vmallocinfo
1286    0xffffc20000000000-0xffffc20000201000 2101248 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
1287    /0x2c0 pages=512 vmalloc N0=128 N1=128 N2=128 N3=128
1288    0xffffc20000201000-0xffffc20000302000 1052672 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
1289    /0x2c0 pages=256 vmalloc N0=64 N1=64 N2=64 N3=64
1290    0xffffc20000302000-0xffffc20000304000    8192 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
1291    phys=7fee8000 ioremap
1292    0xffffc20000304000-0xffffc20000307000   12288 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
1293    phys=7fee7000 ioremap
1294    0xffffc2000031d000-0xffffc2000031f000    8192 init_vdso_vars+0x112/0x210
1295    0xffffc2000031f000-0xffffc2000032b000   49152 cramfs_uncompress_init+0x2e ...
1296    /0x80 pages=11 vmalloc N0=3 N1=3 N2=2 N3=3
1297    0xffffc2000033a000-0xffffc2000033d000   12288 sys_swapon+0x640/0xac0      ...
1298    pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
1299    0xffffc20000347000-0xffffc2000034c000   20480 xt_alloc_table_info+0xfe ...
1300    /0x130 [x_tables] pages=4 vmalloc N0=4
1301    0xffffffffa0000000-0xffffffffa000f000   61440 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1302    pages=14 vmalloc N2=14
1303    0xffffffffa000f000-0xffffffffa0014000   20480 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1304    pages=4 vmalloc N1=4
1305    0xffffffffa0014000-0xffffffffa0017000   12288 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1306    pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
1307    0xffffffffa0017000-0xffffffffa0022000   45056 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1308    pages=10 vmalloc N0=10
1309
1310
1311softirqs
1312~~~~~~~~
1313
1314Provides counts of softirq handlers serviced since boot time, for each CPU.
1315
1316::
1317
1318    > cat /proc/softirqs
1319		  CPU0       CPU1       CPU2       CPU3
1320	HI:          0          0          0          0
1321    TIMER:       27166      27120      27097      27034
1322    NET_TX:          0          0          0         17
1323    NET_RX:         42          0          0         39
1324    BLOCK:           0          0        107       1121
1325    TASKLET:         0          0          0        290
1326    SCHED:       27035      26983      26971      26746
1327    HRTIMER:         0          0          0          0
1328	RCU:      1678       1769       2178       2250
1329
13301.3 Networking info in /proc/net
1331--------------------------------
1332
1333The subdirectory  /proc/net  follows  the  usual  pattern. Table 1-8 shows the
1334additional values  you  get  for  IP  version 6 if you configure the kernel to
1335support this. Table 1-9 lists the files and their meaning.
1336
1337
1338.. table:: Table 1-8: IPv6 info in /proc/net
1339
1340 ========== =====================================================
1341 File       Content
1342 ========== =====================================================
1343 udp6       UDP sockets (IPv6)
1344 tcp6       TCP sockets (IPv6)
1345 raw6       Raw device statistics (IPv6)
1346 igmp6      IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6)
1347 if_inet6   List of IPv6 interface addresses
1348 ipv6_route Kernel routing table for IPv6
1349 rt6_stats  Global IPv6 routing tables statistics
1350 sockstat6  Socket statistics (IPv6)
1351 snmp6      Snmp data (IPv6)
1352 ========== =====================================================
1353
1354.. table:: Table 1-9: Network info in /proc/net
1355
1356 ============= ================================================================
1357 File          Content
1358 ============= ================================================================
1359 arp           Kernel  ARP table
1360 dev           network devices with statistics
1361 dev_mcast     the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too
1362               (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound
1363               addresses).
1364 dev_stat      network device status
1365 ip_fwchains   Firewall chain linkage
1366 ip_fwnames    Firewall chain names
1367 ip_masq       Directory containing the masquerading tables
1368 ip_masquerade Major masquerading table
1369 netstat       Network statistics
1370 raw           raw device statistics
1371 route         Kernel routing table
1372 rpc           Directory containing rpc info
1373 rt_cache      Routing cache
1374 snmp          SNMP data
1375 sockstat      Socket statistics
1376 softnet_stat  Per-CPU incoming packets queues statistics of online CPUs
1377 tcp           TCP  sockets
1378 udp           UDP sockets
1379 unix          UNIX domain sockets
1380 wireless      Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc)
1381 igmp          IP multicast addresses, which this host joined
1382 psched        Global packet scheduler parameters.
1383 netlink       List of PF_NETLINK sockets
1384 ip_mr_vifs    List of multicast virtual interfaces
1385 ip_mr_cache   List of multicast routing cache
1386 ============= ================================================================
1387
1388You can  use  this  information  to see which network devices are available in
1389your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices::
1390
1391  > cat /proc/net/dev
1392  Inter-|Receive                                                   |[...
1393   face |bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[...
1394      lo:  908188   5596     0    0    0     0          0         0 [...
1395    ppp0:15475140  20721   410    0    0   410          0         0 [...
1396    eth0:  614530   7085     0    0    0     0          0         1 [...
1397
1398  ...] Transmit
1399  ...] bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
1400  ...]  908188     5596    0    0    0     0       0          0
1401  ...] 1375103    17405    0    0    0     0       0          0
1402  ...] 1703981     5535    0    0    0     3       0          0
1403
1404In addition, each Channel Bond interface has its own directory.  For
1405example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/.
1406It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the
1407current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how
1408many times the slaves link has failed.
1409
14101.4 SCSI info
1411-------------
1412
1413If you have a SCSI or ATA host adapter in your system, you'll find a
1414subdirectory named after the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi.
1415You'll also see a list of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi::
1416
1417  >cat /proc/scsi/scsi
1418  Attached devices:
1419  Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
1420    Vendor: IBM      Model: DGHS09U          Rev: 03E0
1421    Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 03
1422  Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
1423    Vendor: PIONEER  Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S   Rev: 1.04
1424    Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI SCSI revision: 02
1425
1426
1427The directory  named  after  the driver has one file for each adapter found in
1428the system.  These  files  contain information about the controller, including
1429the used  IRQ  and  the  IO  address range. The amount of information shown is
1430dependent on  the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec
1431AHA-2940 SCSI adapter::
1432
1433  > cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0
1434
1435  Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4
1436  Compile Options:
1437    TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled
1438    AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS     : Disabled
1439    AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY    : 5
1440  Adapter Configuration:
1441             SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter
1442                             Ultra Wide Controller
1443      PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000
1444   Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used.
1445        Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled
1446                      IRQ: 10
1447                     SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2,
1448                           Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255
1449               Interrupts: 160328
1450        BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6
1451     Adapter Control Word: 0x005b
1452     Extended Translation: Enabled
1453  Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff
1454       Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001
1455   Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000
1456  Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000
1457  Default Tag Queue Depth: 8
1458      Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0:
1459        {255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255}
1460      Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0:
1461        {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
1462  Statistics:
1463  (scsi0:0:0:0)
1464    Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8
1465    Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0)
1466    Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes)
1467  (scsi0:0:6:0)
1468    Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15
1469    Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0)
1470    Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes)
1471
1472
14731.5 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
1474---------------------------------------
1475
1476The directory  /proc/parport  contains information about the parallel ports of
1477your system.  It  has  one  subdirectory  for  each port, named after the port
1478number (0,1,2,...).
1479
1480These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-10.
1481
1482
1483.. table:: Table 1-10: Files in /proc/parport
1484
1485 ========= ====================================================================
1486 File      Content
1487 ========= ====================================================================
1488 autoprobe Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired.
1489 devices   list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the
1490           name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear
1491           against any).
1492 hardware  Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel.
1493 irq       IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate
1494           file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ
1495           number or none).
1496 ========= ====================================================================
1497
14981.6 TTY info in /proc/tty
1499-------------------------
1500
1501Information about  the  available  and actually used tty's can be found in the
1502directory /proc/tty. You'll find  entries  for drivers and line disciplines in
1503this directory, as shown in Table 1-11.
1504
1505
1506.. table:: Table 1-11: Files in /proc/tty
1507
1508 ============= ==============================================
1509 File          Content
1510 ============= ==============================================
1511 drivers       list of drivers and their usage
1512 ldiscs        registered line disciplines
1513 driver/serial usage statistic and status of single tty lines
1514 ============= ==============================================
1515
1516To see  which  tty's  are  currently in use, you can simply look into the file
1517/proc/tty/drivers::
1518
1519  > cat /proc/tty/drivers
1520  pty_slave            /dev/pts      136   0-255 pty:slave
1521  pty_master           /dev/ptm      128   0-255 pty:master
1522  pty_slave            /dev/ttyp       3   0-255 pty:slave
1523  pty_master           /dev/pty        2   0-255 pty:master
1524  serial               /dev/cua        5   64-67 serial:callout
1525  serial               /dev/ttyS       4   64-67 serial
1526  /dev/tty0            /dev/tty0       4       0 system:vtmaster
1527  /dev/ptmx            /dev/ptmx       5       2 system
1528  /dev/console         /dev/console    5       1 system:console
1529  /dev/tty             /dev/tty        5       0 system:/dev/tty
1530  unknown              /dev/tty        4    1-63 console
1531
1532
15331.7 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
1534-------------------------------------------------
1535
1536Various pieces   of  information about  kernel activity  are  available in the
1537/proc/stat file.  All  of  the numbers reported  in  this file are  aggregates
1538since the system first booted.  For a quick look, simply cat the file::
1539
1540  > cat /proc/stat
1541  cpu  237902850 368826709 106375398 1873517540 1135548 0 14507935 0 0 0
1542  cpu0 60045249 91891769 26331539 468411416 495718 0 5739640 0 0 0
1543  cpu1 59746288 91759249 26609887 468860630 312281 0 4384817 0 0 0
1544  cpu2 59489247 92985423 26904446 467808813 171668 0 2268998 0 0 0
1545  cpu3 58622065 92190267 26529524 468436680 155879 0 2114478 0 0 0
1546  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>
1547  ctxt 22848221062
1548  btime 1605316999
1549  processes 746787147
1550  procs_running 2
1551  procs_blocked 0
1552  softirq 12121874454 100099120 3938138295 127375644 2795979 187870761 0 173808342 3072582055 52608 224184354
1553
1554The very first  "cpu" line aggregates the  numbers in all  of the other "cpuN"
1555lines.  These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing
1556different kinds of work.  Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a
1557second).  The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
1558
1559- user: normal processes executing in user mode
1560- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
1561- system: processes executing in kernel mode
1562- idle: twiddling thumbs
1563- iowait: In a word, iowait stands for waiting for I/O to complete. But there
1564  are several problems:
1565
1566  1. CPU will not wait for I/O to complete, iowait is the time that a task is
1567     waiting for I/O to complete. When CPU goes into idle state for
1568     outstanding task I/O, another task will be scheduled on this CPU.
1569  2. In a multi-core CPU, the task waiting for I/O to complete is not running
1570     on any CPU, so the iowait of each CPU is difficult to calculate.
1571  3. The value of iowait field in /proc/stat will decrease in certain
1572     conditions.
1573
1574  So, the iowait is not reliable by reading from /proc/stat.
1575- irq: servicing interrupts
1576- softirq: servicing softirqs
1577- steal: involuntary wait
1578- guest: running a normal guest
1579- guest_nice: running a niced guest
1580
1581The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts  serviced since boot time, for each
1582of the  possible system interrupts.   The first  column  is the  total of  all
1583interrupts serviced  including  unnumbered  architecture specific  interrupts;
1584each  subsequent column is the  total for that particular numbered interrupt.
1585Unnumbered interrupts are not shown, only summed into the total.
1586
1587The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.
1588
1589The "btime" line gives  the time at which the  system booted, in seconds since
1590the Unix epoch.
1591
1592The "processes" line gives the number  of processes and threads created, which
1593includes (but  is not limited  to) those  created by  calls to the  fork() and
1594clone() system calls.
1595
1596The "procs_running" line gives the total number of threads that are
1597running or ready to run (i.e., the total number of runnable threads).
1598
1599The   "procs_blocked" line gives  the  number of  processes currently blocked,
1600waiting for I/O to complete.
1601
1602The "softirq" line gives counts of softirqs serviced since boot time, for each
1603of the possible system softirqs. The first column is the total of all
1604softirqs serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular
1605softirq.
1606
1607
16081.8 Ext4 file system parameters
1609-------------------------------
1610
1611Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in
1612/proc/fs/ext4.  Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
1613/proc/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /proc/fs/ext4/hdc or
1614/proc/fs/ext4/sda9 or /proc/fs/ext4/dm-0).   The files in each per-device
1615directory are shown in Table 1-12, below.
1616
1617.. table:: Table 1-12: Files in /proc/fs/ext4/<devname>
1618
1619 ==============  ==========================================================
1620 File            Content
1621 mb_groups       details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks
1622 ==============  ==========================================================
1623
16241.9 /proc/consoles
1625-------------------
1626Shows registered system console lines.
1627
1628To see which character device lines are currently used for the system console
1629/dev/console, you may simply look into the file /proc/consoles::
1630
1631  > cat /proc/consoles
1632  tty0                 -WU (ECp)       4:7
1633  ttyS0                -W- (Ep)        4:64
1634
1635The columns are:
1636
1637+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1638| device             | name of the device                                    |
1639+====================+=======================================================+
1640| operations         | * R = can do read operations                          |
1641|                    | * W = can do write operations                         |
1642|                    | * U = can do unblank                                  |
1643+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1644| flags              | * E = it is enabled                                   |
1645|                    | * C = it is preferred console                         |
1646|                    | * B = it is primary boot console                      |
1647|                    | * p = it is used for printk buffer                    |
1648|                    | * b = it is not a TTY but a Braille device            |
1649|                    | * a = it is safe to use when cpu is offline           |
1650+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1651| major:minor        | major and minor number of the device separated by a   |
1652|                    | colon                                                 |
1653+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1654
1655Summary
1656-------
1657
1658The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only
1659allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status
1660by reading files in the hierarchy.
1661
1662The directory  structure  of /proc reflects the types of information and makes
1663it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data.
1664
1665Chapter 2: Modifying System Parameters
1666======================================
1667
1668In This Chapter
1669---------------
1670
1671* Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys
1672* Exploring the files which modify certain parameters
1673* Review of the /proc/sys file tree
1674
1675------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1676
1677A very  interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only
1678a source  of  information,  it also allows you to change parameters within the
1679kernel. Be  very  careful  when attempting this. You can optimize your system,
1680but you  can  also  cause  it  to  crash.  Never  alter kernel parameters on a
1681production system.  Set  up  a  development machine and test to make sure that
1682everything works  the  way  you want it to. You may have no alternative but to
1683reboot the machine once an error has been made.
1684
1685To change  a  value,  simply  echo  the new value into the file.
1686You need to be root to do this. You  can  create  your  own  boot script
1687to perform this every time your system boots.
1688
1689The files  in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and
1690general things  in  the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files
1691can inadvertently  disrupt  your  system,  it  is  advisable  to  read  both
1692documentation and  source  before actually making adjustments. In any case, be
1693very careful  when  writing  to  any  of these files. The entries in /proc may
1694change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt
1695review the kernel documentation in the directory linux/Documentation.
1696This chapter  is  heavily  based  on the documentation included in the pre 2.2
1697kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel.
1698
1699Please see: Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/ directory for descriptions of
1700these entries.
1701
1702Summary
1703-------
1704
1705Certain aspects  of  kernel  behavior  can be modified at runtime, without the
1706need to  recompile  the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the
1707/proc/sys tree  can  not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo
1708command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings
1709of the kernel.
1710
1711
1712Chapter 3: Per-process Parameters
1713=================================
1714
17153.1 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj & /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj- Adjust the oom-killer score
1716--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1717
1718These files can be used to adjust the badness heuristic used to select which
1719process gets killed in out of memory (oom) conditions.
1720
1721The badness heuristic assigns a value to each candidate task ranging from 0
1722(never kill) to 1000 (always kill) to determine which process is targeted.  The
1723units are roughly a proportion along that range of allowed memory the process
1724may allocate from based on an estimation of its current memory and swap use.
1725For example, if a task is using all allowed memory, its badness score will be
17261000.  If it is using half of its allowed memory, its score will be 500.
1727
1728The amount of "allowed" memory depends on the context in which the oom killer
1729was called.  If it is due to the memory assigned to the allocating task's cpuset
1730being exhausted, the allowed memory represents the set of mems assigned to that
1731cpuset.  If it is due to a mempolicy's node(s) being exhausted, the allowed
1732memory represents the set of mempolicy nodes.  If it is due to a memory
1733limit (or swap limit) being reached, the allowed memory is that configured
1734limit.  Finally, if it is due to the entire system being out of memory, the
1735allowed memory represents all allocatable resources.
1736
1737The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj is added to the badness score before it
1738is used to determine which task to kill.  Acceptable values range from -1000
1739(OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MIN) to +1000 (OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MAX).  This allows userspace to
1740polarize the preference for oom killing either by always preferring a certain
1741task or completely disabling it.  The lowest possible value, -1000, is
1742equivalent to disabling oom killing entirely for that task since it will always
1743report a badness score of 0.
1744
1745Consequently, it is very simple for userspace to define the amount of memory to
1746consider for each task.  Setting a /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj value of +500, for
1747example, is roughly equivalent to allowing the remainder of tasks sharing the
1748same system, cpuset, mempolicy, or memory controller resources to use at least
174950% more memory.  A value of -500, on the other hand, would be roughly
1750equivalent to discounting 50% of the task's allowed memory from being considered
1751as scoring against the task.
1752
1753For backwards compatibility with previous kernels, /proc/<pid>/oom_adj may also
1754be used to tune the badness score.  Its acceptable values range from -16
1755(OOM_ADJUST_MIN) to +15 (OOM_ADJUST_MAX) and a special value of -17
1756(OOM_DISABLE) to disable oom killing entirely for that task.  Its value is
1757scaled linearly with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj.
1758
1759The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj may be reduced no lower than the last
1760value set by a CAP_SYS_RESOURCE process. To reduce the value any lower
1761requires CAP_SYS_RESOURCE.
1762
1763
17643.2 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
1765-------------------------------------------------------------
1766
1767This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer for
1768any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj to tune which
1769process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.
1770
1771Please note that the exported value includes oom_score_adj so it is
1772effectively in range [0,2000].
1773
1774
17753.3  /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
1776-------------------------------------------------------
1777
1778This file contains IO statistics for each running process.
1779
1780Example
1781~~~~~~~
1782
1783::
1784
1785    test:/tmp # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.dat &
1786    [1] 3828
1787
1788    test:/tmp # cat /proc/3828/io
1789    rchar: 323934931
1790    wchar: 323929600
1791    syscr: 632687
1792    syscw: 632675
1793    read_bytes: 0
1794    write_bytes: 323932160
1795    cancelled_write_bytes: 0
1796
1797
1798Description
1799~~~~~~~~~~~
1800
1801rchar
1802^^^^^
1803
1804I/O counter: chars read
1805The number of bytes which this task has caused to be read from storage. This
1806is simply the sum of bytes which this process passed to read() and pread().
1807It includes things like tty IO and it is unaffected by whether or not actual
1808physical disk IO was required (the read might have been satisfied from
1809pagecache).
1810
1811
1812wchar
1813^^^^^
1814
1815I/O counter: chars written
1816The number of bytes which this task has caused, or shall cause to be written
1817to disk. Similar caveats apply here as with rchar.
1818
1819
1820syscr
1821^^^^^
1822
1823I/O counter: read syscalls
1824Attempt to count the number of read I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like read()
1825and pread().
1826
1827
1828syscw
1829^^^^^
1830
1831I/O counter: write syscalls
1832Attempt to count the number of write I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like
1833write() and pwrite().
1834
1835
1836read_bytes
1837^^^^^^^^^^
1838
1839I/O counter: bytes read
1840Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process really did cause to
1841be fetched from the storage layer. Done at the submit_bio() level, so it is
1842accurate for block-backed filesystems. <please add status regarding NFS and
1843CIFS at a later time>
1844
1845
1846write_bytes
1847^^^^^^^^^^^
1848
1849I/O counter: bytes written
1850Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process caused to be sent to
1851the storage layer. This is done at page-dirtying time.
1852
1853
1854cancelled_write_bytes
1855^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1856
1857The big inaccuracy here is truncate. If a process writes 1MB to a file and
1858then deletes the file, it will in fact perform no writeout. But it will have
1859been accounted as having caused 1MB of write.
1860In other words: The number of bytes which this process caused to not happen,
1861by truncating pagecache. A task can cause "negative" IO too. If this task
1862truncates some dirty pagecache, some IO which another task has been accounted
1863for (in its write_bytes) will not be happening. We _could_ just subtract that
1864from the truncating task's write_bytes, but there is information loss in doing
1865that.
1866
1867
1868.. Note::
1869
1870   At its current implementation state, this is a bit racy on 32-bit machines:
1871   if process A reads process B's /proc/pid/io while process B is updating one
1872   of those 64-bit counters, process A could see an intermediate result.
1873
1874
1875More information about this can be found within the taskstats documentation in
1876Documentation/accounting.
1877
18783.4 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
1879---------------------------------------------------------------
1880When a process is dumped, all anonymous memory is written to a core file as
1881long as the size of the core file isn't limited. But sometimes we don't want
1882to dump some memory segments, for example, huge shared memory or DAX.
1883Conversely, sometimes we want to save file-backed memory segments into a core
1884file, not only the individual files.
1885
1886/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter allows you to customize which memory segments
1887will be dumped when the <pid> process is dumped. coredump_filter is a bitmask
1888of memory types. If a bit of the bitmask is set, memory segments of the
1889corresponding memory type are dumped, otherwise they are not dumped.
1890
1891The following 9 memory types are supported:
1892
1893  - (bit 0) anonymous private memory
1894  - (bit 1) anonymous shared memory
1895  - (bit 2) file-backed private memory
1896  - (bit 3) file-backed shared memory
1897  - (bit 4) ELF header pages in file-backed private memory areas (it is
1898    effective only if the bit 2 is cleared)
1899  - (bit 5) hugetlb private memory
1900  - (bit 6) hugetlb shared memory
1901  - (bit 7) DAX private memory
1902  - (bit 8) DAX shared memory
1903
1904  Note that MMIO pages such as frame buffer are never dumped and vDSO pages
1905  are always dumped regardless of the bitmask status.
1906
1907  Note that bits 0-4 don't affect hugetlb or DAX memory. hugetlb memory is
1908  only affected by bit 5-6, and DAX is only affected by bits 7-8.
1909
1910The default value of coredump_filter is 0x33; this means all anonymous memory
1911segments, ELF header pages and hugetlb private memory are dumped.
1912
1913If you don't want to dump all shared memory segments attached to pid 1234,
1914write 0x31 to the process's proc file::
1915
1916  $ echo 0x31 > /proc/1234/coredump_filter
1917
1918When a new process is created, the process inherits the bitmask status from its
1919parent. It is useful to set up coredump_filter before the program runs.
1920For example::
1921
1922  $ echo 0x7 > /proc/self/coredump_filter
1923  $ ./some_program
1924
19253.5	/proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
1926--------------------------------------------------------
1927
1928This file contains lines of the form::
1929
1930    36 35 98:0 /mnt1 /mnt2 rw,noatime master:1 - ext3 /dev/root rw,errors=continue
1931    (1)(2)(3)   (4)   (5)      (6)     (n…m) (m+1)(m+2) (m+3)         (m+4)
1932
1933    (1)   mount ID:        unique identifier of the mount (may be reused after umount)
1934    (2)   parent ID:       ID of parent (or of self for the top of the mount tree)
1935    (3)   major:minor:     value of st_dev for files on filesystem
1936    (4)   root:            root of the mount within the filesystem
1937    (5)   mount point:     mount point relative to the process's root
1938    (6)   mount options:   per mount options
1939    (n…m) optional fields: zero or more fields of the form "tag[:value]"
1940    (m+1) separator:       marks the end of the optional fields
1941    (m+2) filesystem type: name of filesystem of the form "type[.subtype]"
1942    (m+3) mount source:    filesystem specific information or "none"
1943    (m+4) super options:   per super block options
1944
1945Parsers should ignore all unrecognised optional fields.  Currently the
1946possible optional fields are:
1947
1948================  ==============================================================
1949shared:X          mount is shared in peer group X
1950master:X          mount is slave to peer group X
1951propagate_from:X  mount is slave and receives propagation from peer group X [#]_
1952unbindable        mount is unbindable
1953================  ==============================================================
1954
1955.. [#] X is the closest dominant peer group under the process's root.  If
1956       X is the immediate master of the mount, or if there's no dominant peer
1957       group under the same root, then only the "master:X" field is present
1958       and not the "propagate_from:X" field.
1959
1960For more information on mount propagation see:
1961
1962  Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.rst
1963
1964
19653.6	/proc/<pid>/comm  & /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/comm
1966--------------------------------------------------------
1967These files provide a method to access a task's comm value. It also allows for
1968a task to set its own or one of its thread siblings comm value. The comm value
1969is limited in size compared to the cmdline value, so writing anything longer
1970then the kernel's TASK_COMM_LEN (currently 16 chars, including the NUL
1971terminator) will result in a truncated comm value.
1972
1973
19743.7	/proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/children - Information about task children
1975-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1976This file provides a fast way to retrieve first level children pids
1977of a task pointed by <pid>/<tid> pair. The format is a space separated
1978stream of pids.
1979
1980Note the "first level" here -- if a child has its own children they will
1981not be listed here; one needs to read /proc/<children-pid>/task/<tid>/children
1982to obtain the descendants.
1983
1984Since this interface is intended to be fast and cheap it doesn't
1985guarantee to provide precise results and some children might be
1986skipped, especially if they've exited right after we printed their
1987pids, so one needs to either stop or freeze processes being inspected
1988if precise results are needed.
1989
1990
19913.8	/proc/<pid>/fdinfo/<fd> - Information about opened file
1992---------------------------------------------------------------
1993This file provides information associated with an opened file. The regular
1994files have at least four fields -- 'pos', 'flags', 'mnt_id' and 'ino'.
1995The 'pos' represents the current offset of the opened file in decimal
1996form [see lseek(2) for details], 'flags' denotes the octal O_xxx mask the
1997file has been created with [see open(2) for details] and 'mnt_id' represents
1998mount ID of the file system containing the opened file [see 3.5
1999/proc/<pid>/mountinfo for details]. 'ino' represents the inode number of
2000the file.
2001
2002A typical output is::
2003
2004	pos:	0
2005	flags:	0100002
2006	mnt_id:	19
2007	ino:	63107
2008
2009All locks associated with a file descriptor are shown in its fdinfo too::
2010
2011    lock:       1: FLOCK  ADVISORY  WRITE 359 00:13:11691 0 EOF
2012
2013The files such as eventfd, fsnotify, signalfd, epoll among the regular pos/flags
2014pair provide additional information particular to the objects they represent.
2015
2016Eventfd files
2017~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2018
2019::
2020
2021	pos:	0
2022	flags:	04002
2023	mnt_id:	9
2024	ino:	63107
2025	eventfd-count:	5a
2026
2027where 'eventfd-count' is hex value of a counter.
2028
2029Signalfd files
2030~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2031
2032::
2033
2034	pos:	0
2035	flags:	04002
2036	mnt_id:	9
2037	ino:	63107
2038	sigmask:	0000000000000200
2039
2040where 'sigmask' is hex value of the signal mask associated
2041with a file.
2042
2043Epoll files
2044~~~~~~~~~~~
2045
2046::
2047
2048	pos:	0
2049	flags:	02
2050	mnt_id:	9
2051	ino:	63107
2052	tfd:        5 events:       1d data: ffffffffffffffff pos:0 ino:61af sdev:7
2053
2054where 'tfd' is a target file descriptor number in decimal form,
2055'events' is events mask being watched and the 'data' is data
2056associated with a target [see epoll(7) for more details].
2057
2058The 'pos' is current offset of the target file in decimal form
2059[see lseek(2)], 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device numbers
2060where target file resides, all in hex format.
2061
2062Fsnotify files
2063~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2064For inotify files the format is the following::
2065
2066	pos:	0
2067	flags:	02000000
2068	mnt_id:	9
2069	ino:	63107
2070	inotify wd:3 ino:9e7e sdev:800013 mask:800afce ignored_mask:0 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:7e9e0000640d1b6d
2071
2072where 'wd' is a watch descriptor in decimal form, i.e. a target file
2073descriptor number, 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device where the
2074target file resides and the 'mask' is the mask of events, all in hex
2075form [see inotify(7) for more details].
2076
2077If the kernel was built with exportfs support, the path to the target
2078file is encoded as a file handle.  The file handle is provided by three
2079fields 'fhandle-bytes', 'fhandle-type' and 'f_handle', all in hex
2080format.
2081
2082If the kernel is built without exportfs support the file handle won't be
2083printed out.
2084
2085If there is no inotify mark attached yet the 'inotify' line will be omitted.
2086
2087For fanotify files the format is::
2088
2089	pos:	0
2090	flags:	02
2091	mnt_id:	9
2092	ino:	63107
2093	fanotify flags:10 event-flags:0
2094	fanotify mnt_id:12 mflags:40 mask:38 ignored_mask:40000003
2095	fanotify ino:4f969 sdev:800013 mflags:0 mask:3b ignored_mask:40000000 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:69f90400c275b5b4
2096
2097where fanotify 'flags' and 'event-flags' are values used in fanotify_init
2098call, 'mnt_id' is the mount point identifier, 'mflags' is the value of
2099flags associated with mark which are tracked separately from events
2100mask. 'ino' and 'sdev' are target inode and device, 'mask' is the events
2101mask and 'ignored_mask' is the mask of events which are to be ignored.
2102All are in hex format. Incorporation of 'mflags', 'mask' and 'ignored_mask'
2103provide information about flags and mask used in fanotify_mark
2104call [see fsnotify manpage for details].
2105
2106While the first three lines are mandatory and always printed, the rest is
2107optional and may be omitted if no marks created yet.
2108
2109Timerfd files
2110~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2111
2112::
2113
2114	pos:	0
2115	flags:	02
2116	mnt_id:	9
2117	ino:	63107
2118	clockid: 0
2119	ticks: 0
2120	settime flags: 01
2121	it_value: (0, 49406829)
2122	it_interval: (1, 0)
2123
2124where 'clockid' is the clock type and 'ticks' is the number of the timer expirations
2125that have occurred [see timerfd_create(2) for details]. 'settime flags' are
2126flags in octal form been used to setup the timer [see timerfd_settime(2) for
2127details]. 'it_value' is remaining time until the timer expiration.
2128'it_interval' is the interval for the timer. Note the timer might be set up
2129with TIMER_ABSTIME option which will be shown in 'settime flags', but 'it_value'
2130still exhibits timer's remaining time.
2131
2132DMA Buffer files
2133~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2134
2135::
2136
2137	pos:	0
2138	flags:	04002
2139	mnt_id:	9
2140	ino:	63107
2141	size:   32768
2142	count:  2
2143	exp_name:  system-heap
2144
2145where 'size' is the size of the DMA buffer in bytes. 'count' is the file count of
2146the DMA buffer file. 'exp_name' is the name of the DMA buffer exporter.
2147
21483.9	/proc/<pid>/map_files - Information about memory mapped files
2149---------------------------------------------------------------------
2150This directory contains symbolic links which represent memory mapped files
2151the process is maintaining.  Example output::
2152
2153     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c600000-333c620000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2154     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c81f000-333c820000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2155     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c820000-333c821000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2156     | ...
2157     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 35d0421000-35d0422000 -> /usr/lib64/libselinux.so.1
2158     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 400000-41a000 -> /usr/bin/ls
2159
2160The name of a link represents the virtual memory bounds of a mapping, i.e.
2161vm_area_struct::vm_start-vm_area_struct::vm_end.
2162
2163The main purpose of the map_files is to retrieve a set of memory mapped
2164files in a fast way instead of parsing /proc/<pid>/maps or
2165/proc/<pid>/smaps, both of which contain many more records.  At the same
2166time one can open(2) mappings from the listings of two processes and
2167comparing their inode numbers to figure out which anonymous memory areas
2168are actually shared.
2169
21703.10	/proc/<pid>/timerslack_ns - Task timerslack value
2171---------------------------------------------------------
2172This file provides the value of the task's timerslack value in nanoseconds.
2173This value specifies an amount of time that normal timers may be deferred
2174in order to coalesce timers and avoid unnecessary wakeups.
2175
2176This allows a task's interactivity vs power consumption tradeoff to be
2177adjusted.
2178
2179Writing 0 to the file will set the task's timerslack to the default value.
2180
2181Valid values are from 0 - ULLONG_MAX
2182
2183An application setting the value must have PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_FSCREDS level
2184permissions on the task specified to change its timerslack_ns value.
2185
21863.11	/proc/<pid>/patch_state - Livepatch patch operation state
2187-----------------------------------------------------------------
2188When CONFIG_LIVEPATCH is enabled, this file displays the value of the
2189patch state for the task.
2190
2191A value of '-1' indicates that no patch is in transition.
2192
2193A value of '0' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is
2194unpatched.  If the patch is being enabled, then the task hasn't been
2195patched yet.  If the patch is being disabled, then the task has already
2196been unpatched.
2197
2198A value of '1' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is
2199patched.  If the patch is being enabled, then the task has already been
2200patched.  If the patch is being disabled, then the task hasn't been
2201unpatched yet.
2202
22033.12 /proc/<pid>/arch_status - task architecture specific status
2204-------------------------------------------------------------------
2205When CONFIG_PROC_PID_ARCH_STATUS is enabled, this file displays the
2206architecture specific status of the task.
2207
2208Example
2209~~~~~~~
2210
2211::
2212
2213 $ cat /proc/6753/arch_status
2214 AVX512_elapsed_ms:      8
2215
2216Description
2217~~~~~~~~~~~
2218
2219x86 specific entries
2220~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2221
2222AVX512_elapsed_ms
2223^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2224
2225  If AVX512 is supported on the machine, this entry shows the milliseconds
2226  elapsed since the last time AVX512 usage was recorded. The recording
2227  happens on a best effort basis when a task is scheduled out. This means
2228  that the value depends on two factors:
2229
2230    1) The time which the task spent on the CPU without being scheduled
2231       out. With CPU isolation and a single runnable task this can take
2232       several seconds.
2233
2234    2) The time since the task was scheduled out last. Depending on the
2235       reason for being scheduled out (time slice exhausted, syscall ...)
2236       this can be arbitrary long time.
2237
2238  As a consequence the value cannot be considered precise and authoritative
2239  information. The application which uses this information has to be aware
2240  of the overall scenario on the system in order to determine whether a
2241  task is a real AVX512 user or not. Precise information can be obtained
2242  with performance counters.
2243
2244  A special value of '-1' indicates that no AVX512 usage was recorded, thus
2245  the task is unlikely an AVX512 user, but depends on the workload and the
2246  scheduling scenario, it also could be a false negative mentioned above.
2247
22483.13 /proc/<pid>/fd - List of symlinks to open files
2249-------------------------------------------------------
2250This directory contains symbolic links which represent open files
2251the process is maintaining.  Example output::
2252
2253  lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 0 -> /dev/null
2254  l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 1 -> /dev/null
2255  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 10 -> 'socket:[12539]'
2256  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 11 -> 'socket:[12540]'
2257  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 12 -> 'socket:[12542]'
2258
2259The number of open files for the process is stored in 'size' member
2260of stat() output for /proc/<pid>/fd for fast access.
2261-------------------------------------------------------
2262
22633.14 /proc/<pid/ksm_stat - Information about the process's ksm status
2264---------------------------------------------------------------------
2265When CONFIG_KSM is enabled, each process has this file which displays
2266the information of ksm merging status.
2267
2268Example
2269~~~~~~~
2270
2271::
2272
2273    / # cat /proc/self/ksm_stat
2274    ksm_rmap_items 0
2275    ksm_zero_pages 0
2276    ksm_merging_pages 0
2277    ksm_process_profit 0
2278    ksm_merge_any: no
2279    ksm_mergeable: no
2280
2281Description
2282~~~~~~~~~~~
2283
2284ksm_rmap_items
2285^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2286
2287The number of ksm_rmap_item structures in use.  The structure
2288ksm_rmap_item stores the reverse mapping information for virtual
2289addresses.  KSM will generate a ksm_rmap_item for each ksm-scanned page of
2290the process.
2291
2292ksm_zero_pages
2293^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2294
2295When /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/use_zero_pages is enabled, it represent how many
2296empty pages are merged with kernel zero pages by KSM.
2297
2298ksm_merging_pages
2299^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2300
2301It represents how many pages of this process are involved in KSM merging
2302(not including ksm_zero_pages). It is the same with what
2303/proc/<pid>/ksm_merging_pages shows.
2304
2305ksm_process_profit
2306^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2307
2308The profit that KSM brings (Saved bytes). KSM can save memory by merging
2309identical pages, but also can consume additional memory, because it needs
2310to generate a number of rmap_items to save each scanned page's brief rmap
2311information. Some of these pages may be merged, but some may not be abled
2312to be merged after being checked several times, which are unprofitable
2313memory consumed.
2314
2315ksm_merge_any
2316^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2317
2318It specifies whether the process's 'mm is added by prctl() into the
2319candidate list of KSM or not, and if KSM scanning is fully enabled at
2320process level.
2321
2322ksm_mergeable
2323^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2324
2325It specifies whether any VMAs of the process''s mms are currently
2326applicable to KSM.
2327
2328More information about KSM can be found in
2329Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst.
2330
2331
2332Chapter 4: Configuring procfs
2333=============================
2334
23354.1	Mount options
2336---------------------
2337
2338The following mount options are supported:
2339
2340	=========	========================================================
2341	hidepid=	Set /proc/<pid>/ access mode.
2342	gid=		Set the group authorized to learn processes information.
2343	subset=		Show only the specified subset of procfs.
2344	=========	========================================================
2345
2346hidepid=off or hidepid=0 means classic mode - everybody may access all
2347/proc/<pid>/ directories (default).
2348
2349hidepid=noaccess or hidepid=1 means users may not access any /proc/<pid>/
2350directories but their own.  Sensitive files like cmdline, sched*, status are now
2351protected against other users.  This makes it impossible to learn whether any
2352user runs specific program (given the program doesn't reveal itself by its
2353behaviour).  As an additional bonus, as /proc/<pid>/cmdline is unaccessible for
2354other users, poorly written programs passing sensitive information via program
2355arguments are now protected against local eavesdroppers.
2356
2357hidepid=invisible or hidepid=2 means hidepid=1 plus all /proc/<pid>/ will be
2358fully invisible to other users.  It doesn't mean that it hides a fact whether a
2359process with a specific pid value exists (it can be learned by other means, e.g.
2360by "kill -0 $PID"), but it hides process's uid and gid, which may be learned by
2361stat()'ing /proc/<pid>/ otherwise.  It greatly complicates an intruder's task of
2362gathering information about running processes, whether some daemon runs with
2363elevated privileges, whether other user runs some sensitive program, whether
2364other users run any program at all, etc.
2365
2366hidepid=ptraceable or hidepid=4 means that procfs should only contain
2367/proc/<pid>/ directories that the caller can ptrace.
2368
2369gid= defines a group authorized to learn processes information otherwise
2370prohibited by hidepid=.  If you use some daemon like identd which needs to learn
2371information about processes information, just add identd to this group.
2372
2373subset=pid hides all top level files and directories in the procfs that
2374are not related to tasks.
2375
2376Chapter 5: Filesystem behavior
2377==============================
2378
2379Originally, before the advent of pid namespace, procfs was a global file
2380system. It means that there was only one procfs instance in the system.
2381
2382When pid namespace was added, a separate procfs instance was mounted in
2383each pid namespace. So, procfs mount options are global among all
2384mountpoints within the same namespace::
2385
2386	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2387	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2388
2389	# strace -e mount mount -o hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2390	mount("proc", "/tmp/proc", "proc", 0, "hidepid=1") = 0
2391	+++ exited with 0 +++
2392
2393	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2394	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2395	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2396
2397and only after remounting procfs mount options will change at all
2398mountpoints::
2399
2400	# mount -o remount,hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2401
2402	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2403	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
2404	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
2405
2406This behavior is different from the behavior of other filesystems.
2407
2408The new procfs behavior is more like other filesystems. Each procfs mount
2409creates a new procfs instance. Mount options affect own procfs instance.
2410It means that it became possible to have several procfs instances
2411displaying tasks with different filtering options in one pid namespace::
2412
2413	# mount -o hidepid=invisible -t proc proc /proc
2414	# mount -o hidepid=noaccess -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2415	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2416	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=invisible 0 0
2417	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=noaccess 0 0
2418