1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
2
3====================
4The /proc Filesystem
5====================
6
7=====================  =======================================  ================
8/proc/sys              Terrehon Bowden <[email protected]>,  October 7 1999
9                       Bodo Bauer <[email protected]>
102.4.x update	       Jorge Nerin <[email protected]>   November 14 2000
11move /proc/sys	       Shen Feng <[email protected]>	        April 1 2009
12fixes/update part 1.1  Stefani Seibold <[email protected]>    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
64This documentation is  part of a soon (or  so we hope) to be  released book on
65the SuSE  Linux distribution. As  there is  no complete documentation  for the
66/proc file system and we've used  many freely available sources to write these
67chapters, it  seems only fair  to give the work  back to the  Linux community.
68This work is  based on the 2.2.*  kernel version and the  upcoming 2.4.*. I'm
69afraid it's still far from complete, but we  hope it will be useful. As far as
70we know, it is the first 'all-in-one' document about the /proc file system. It
71is focused  on the Intel  x86 hardware,  so if you  are looking for  PPC, ARM,
72SPARC, AXP, etc., features, you probably  won't find what you are looking for.
73It also only covers IPv4 networking, not IPv6 nor other protocols - sorry. But
74additions and patches  are welcome and will  be added to this  document if you
75mail them to Bodo.
76
77We'd like  to  thank Alan Cox, Rik van Riel, and Alexey Kuznetsov and a lot of
78other people for help compiling this documentation. We'd also like to extend a
79special thank  you to Andi Kleen for documentation, which we relied on heavily
80to create  this  document,  as well as the additional information he provided.
81Thanks to  everybody  else  who contributed source or docs to the Linux kernel
82and helped create a great piece of software... :)
83
84If you  have  any comments, corrections or additions, please don't hesitate to
85contact Bodo  Bauer  at  [email protected].  We'll  be happy to add them to this
86document.
87
88The   latest   version    of   this   document   is    available   online   at
89https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/proc.html
90
91If  the above  direction does  not works  for you,  you could  try the  kernel
92mailing  list  at  [email protected]  and/or try  to  reach  me  at
93[email protected].
94
950.2 Legal Stuff
96---------------
97
98We don't  guarantee  the  correctness  of this document, and if you come to us
99complaining about  how  you  screwed  up  your  system  because  of  incorrect
100documentation, we won't feel responsible...
101
102Chapter 1: Collecting System Information
103========================================
104
105In This Chapter
106---------------
107* Investigating  the  properties  of  the  pseudo  file  system  /proc and its
108  ability to provide information on the running Linux system
109* Examining /proc's structure
110* Uncovering  various  information  about the kernel and the processes running
111  on the system
112
113------------------------------------------------------------------------------
114
115The proc  file  system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the
116kernel. It  can  be  used to obtain information about the system and to change
117certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).
118
119First, we'll  take  a  look  at the read-only parts of /proc. In Chapter 2, we
120show you how you can use /proc/sys to change settings.
121
1221.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
123-----------------------------------
124
125The directory  /proc  contains  (among other things) one subdirectory for each
126process running on the system, which is named after the process ID (PID).
127
128The link  'self'  points to  the process reading the file system. Each process
129subdirectory has the entries listed in Table 1-1.
130
131Note that an open file descriptor to /proc/<pid> or to any of its
132contained files or subdirectories does not prevent <pid> being reused
133for some other process in the event that <pid> exits. Operations on
134open /proc/<pid> file descriptors corresponding to dead processes
135never act on any new process that the kernel may, through chance, have
136also assigned the process ID <pid>. Instead, operations on these FDs
137usually fail with ESRCH.
138
139.. table:: Table 1-1: Process specific entries in /proc
140
141 =============  ===============================================================
142 File		Content
143 =============  ===============================================================
144 clear_refs	Clears page referenced bits shown in smaps output
145 cmdline	Command line arguments
146 cpu		Current and last cpu in which it was executed	(2.4)(smp)
147 cwd		Link to the current working directory
148 environ	Values of environment variables
149 exe		Link to the executable of this process
150 fd		Directory, which contains all file descriptors
151 maps		Memory maps to executables and library files	(2.4)
152 mem		Memory held by this process
153 root		Link to the root directory of this process
154 stat		Process status
155 statm		Process memory status information
156 status		Process status in human readable form
157 wchan		Present with CONFIG_KALLSYMS=y: it shows the kernel function
158		symbol the task is blocked in - or "0" if not blocked.
159 pagemap	Page table
160 stack		Report full stack trace, enable via CONFIG_STACKTRACE
161 smaps		An extension based on maps, showing the memory consumption of
162		each mapping and flags associated with it
163 smaps_rollup	Accumulated smaps stats for all mappings of the process.  This
164		can be derived from smaps, but is faster and more convenient
165 numa_maps	An extension based on maps, showing the memory locality and
166		binding policy as well as mem usage (in pages) of each mapping.
167 =============  ===============================================================
168
169For example, to get the status information of a process, all you have to do is
170read the file /proc/PID/status::
171
172  >cat /proc/self/status
173  Name:   cat
174  State:  R (running)
175  Tgid:   5452
176  Pid:    5452
177  PPid:   743
178  TracerPid:      0						(2.4)
179  Uid:    501     501     501     501
180  Gid:    100     100     100     100
181  FDSize: 256
182  Groups: 100 14 16
183  Kthread:    0
184  VmPeak:     5004 kB
185  VmSize:     5004 kB
186  VmLck:         0 kB
187  VmHWM:       476 kB
188  VmRSS:       476 kB
189  RssAnon:             352 kB
190  RssFile:             120 kB
191  RssShmem:              4 kB
192  VmData:      156 kB
193  VmStk:        88 kB
194  VmExe:        68 kB
195  VmLib:      1412 kB
196  VmPTE:        20 kb
197  VmSwap:        0 kB
198  HugetlbPages:          0 kB
199  CoreDumping:    0
200  THP_enabled:	  1
201  Threads:        1
202  SigQ:   0/28578
203  SigPnd: 0000000000000000
204  ShdPnd: 0000000000000000
205  SigBlk: 0000000000000000
206  SigIgn: 0000000000000000
207  SigCgt: 0000000000000000
208  CapInh: 00000000fffffeff
209  CapPrm: 0000000000000000
210  CapEff: 0000000000000000
211  CapBnd: ffffffffffffffff
212  CapAmb: 0000000000000000
213  NoNewPrivs:     0
214  Seccomp:        0
215  Speculation_Store_Bypass:       thread vulnerable
216  SpeculationIndirectBranch:      conditional enabled
217  voluntary_ctxt_switches:        0
218  nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches:     1
219
220This shows you nearly the same information you would get if you viewed it with
221the ps  command.  In  fact,  ps  uses  the  proc  file  system  to  obtain its
222information.  But you get a more detailed  view of the  process by reading the
223file /proc/PID/status. It fields are described in table 1-2.
224
225The  statm  file  contains  more  detailed  information about the process
226memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-3.  The stat file
227contains detailed information about the process itself.  Its fields are
228explained in Table 1-4.
229
230(for SMP CONFIG users)
231
232For making accounting scalable, RSS related information are handled in an
233asynchronous manner and the value may not be very precise. To see a precise
234snapshot of a moment, you can see /proc/<pid>/smaps file and scan page table.
235It's slow but very precise.
236
237.. table:: Table 1-2: Contents of the status fields (as of 4.19)
238
239 ==========================  ===================================================
240 Field                       Content
241 ==========================  ===================================================
242 Name                        filename of the executable
243 Umask                       file mode creation mask
244 State                       state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping
245                             in an uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie,
246			     T is traced or stopped)
247 Tgid                        thread group ID
248 Ngid                        NUMA group ID (0 if none)
249 Pid                         process id
250 PPid                        process id of the parent process
251 TracerPid                   PID of process tracing this process (0 if not, or
252                             the tracer is outside of the current pid namespace)
253 Uid                         Real, effective, saved set, and  file system UIDs
254 Gid                         Real, effective, saved set, and  file system GIDs
255 FDSize                      number of file descriptor slots currently allocated
256 Groups                      supplementary group list
257 NStgid                      descendant namespace thread group ID hierarchy
258 NSpid                       descendant namespace process ID hierarchy
259 NSpgid                      descendant namespace process group ID hierarchy
260 NSsid                       descendant namespace session ID hierarchy
261 Kthread                     kernel thread flag, 1 is yes, 0 is no
262 VmPeak                      peak virtual memory size
263 VmSize                      total program size
264 VmLck                       locked memory size
265 VmPin                       pinned memory size
266 VmHWM                       peak resident set size ("high water mark")
267 VmRSS                       size of memory portions. It contains the three
268                             following parts
269                             (VmRSS = RssAnon + RssFile + RssShmem)
270 RssAnon                     size of resident anonymous memory
271 RssFile                     size of resident file mappings
272 RssShmem                    size of resident shmem memory (includes SysV shm,
273                             mapping of tmpfs and shared anonymous mappings)
274 VmData                      size of private data segments
275 VmStk                       size of stack segments
276 VmExe                       size of text segment
277 VmLib                       size of shared library code
278 VmPTE                       size of page table entries
279 VmSwap                      amount of swap used by anonymous private data
280                             (shmem swap usage is not included)
281 HugetlbPages                size of hugetlb memory portions
282 CoreDumping                 process's memory is currently being dumped
283                             (killing the process may lead to a corrupted core)
284 THP_enabled		     process is allowed to use THP (returns 0 when
285			     PR_SET_THP_DISABLE is set on the process
286 Threads                     number of threads
287 SigQ                        number of signals queued/max. number for queue
288 SigPnd                      bitmap of pending signals for the thread
289 ShdPnd                      bitmap of shared pending signals for the process
290 SigBlk                      bitmap of blocked signals
291 SigIgn                      bitmap of ignored signals
292 SigCgt                      bitmap of caught signals
293 CapInh                      bitmap of inheritable capabilities
294 CapPrm                      bitmap of permitted capabilities
295 CapEff                      bitmap of effective capabilities
296 CapBnd                      bitmap of capabilities bounding set
297 CapAmb                      bitmap of ambient capabilities
298 NoNewPrivs                  no_new_privs, like prctl(PR_GET_NO_NEW_PRIV, ...)
299 Seccomp                     seccomp mode, like prctl(PR_GET_SECCOMP, ...)
300 Speculation_Store_Bypass    speculative store bypass mitigation status
301 SpeculationIndirectBranch   indirect branch speculation mode
302 Cpus_allowed                mask of CPUs on which this process may run
303 Cpus_allowed_list           Same as previous, but in "list format"
304 Mems_allowed                mask of memory nodes allowed to this process
305 Mems_allowed_list           Same as previous, but in "list format"
306 voluntary_ctxt_switches     number of voluntary context switches
307 nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches  number of non voluntary context switches
308 ==========================  ===================================================
309
310
311.. table:: Table 1-3: Contents of the statm fields (as of 2.6.8-rc3)
312
313 ======== ===============================	==============================
314 Field    Content
315 ======== ===============================	==============================
316 size     total program size (pages)		(same as VmSize in status)
317 resident size of memory portions (pages)	(same as VmRSS in status)
318 shared   number of pages that are shared	(i.e. backed by a file, same
319						as RssFile+RssShmem in status)
320 trs      number of pages that are 'code'	(not including libs; broken,
321						includes data segment)
322 lrs      number of pages of library		(always 0 on 2.6)
323 drs      number of pages of data/stack		(including libs; broken,
324						includes library text)
325 dt       number of dirty pages			(always 0 on 2.6)
326 ======== ===============================	==============================
327
328
329.. table:: Table 1-4: Contents of the stat fields (as of 2.6.30-rc7)
330
331  ============= ===============================================================
332  Field         Content
333  ============= ===============================================================
334  pid           process id
335  tcomm         filename of the executable
336  state         state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an
337                uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped)
338  ppid          process id of the parent process
339  pgrp          pgrp of the process
340  sid           session id
341  tty_nr        tty the process uses
342  tty_pgrp      pgrp of the tty
343  flags         task flags
344  min_flt       number of minor faults
345  cmin_flt      number of minor faults with child's
346  maj_flt       number of major faults
347  cmaj_flt      number of major faults with child's
348  utime         user mode jiffies
349  stime         kernel mode jiffies
350  cutime        user mode jiffies with child's
351  cstime        kernel mode jiffies with child's
352  priority      priority level
353  nice          nice level
354  num_threads   number of threads
355  it_real_value	(obsolete, always 0)
356  start_time    time the process started after system boot
357  vsize         virtual memory size
358  rss           resident set memory size
359  rsslim        current limit in bytes on the rss
360  start_code    address above which program text can run
361  end_code      address below which program text can run
362  start_stack   address of the start of the main process stack
363  esp           current value of ESP
364  eip           current value of EIP
365  pending       bitmap of pending signals
366  blocked       bitmap of blocked signals
367  sigign        bitmap of ignored signals
368  sigcatch      bitmap of caught signals
369  0		(place holder, used to be the wchan address,
370		use /proc/PID/wchan instead)
371  0             (place holder)
372  0             (place holder)
373  exit_signal   signal to send to parent thread on exit
374  task_cpu      which CPU the task is scheduled on
375  rt_priority   realtime priority
376  policy        scheduling policy (man sched_setscheduler)
377  blkio_ticks   time spent waiting for block IO
378  gtime         guest time of the task in jiffies
379  cgtime        guest time of the task children in jiffies
380  start_data    address above which program data+bss is placed
381  end_data      address below which program data+bss is placed
382  start_brk     address above which program heap can be expanded with brk()
383  arg_start     address above which program command line is placed
384  arg_end       address below which program command line is placed
385  env_start     address above which program environment is placed
386  env_end       address below which program environment is placed
387  exit_code     the thread's exit_code in the form reported by the waitpid
388		system call
389  ============= ===============================================================
390
391The /proc/PID/maps file contains the currently mapped memory regions and
392their access permissions.
393
394The format is::
395
396    address           perms offset  dev   inode      pathname
397
398    08048000-08049000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8312       /opt/test
399    08049000-0804a000 rw-p 00001000 03:00 8312       /opt/test
400    0804a000-0806b000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [heap]
401    a7cb1000-a7cb2000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0
402    a7cb2000-a7eb2000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
403    a7eb2000-a7eb3000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0
404    a7eb3000-a7ed5000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
405    a7ed5000-a8008000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
406    a8008000-a800a000 r--p 00133000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
407    a800a000-a800b000 rw-p 00135000 03:00 4222       /lib/libc.so.6
408    a800b000-a800e000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
409    a800e000-a8022000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
410    a8022000-a8023000 r--p 00013000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
411    a8023000-a8024000 rw-p 00014000 03:00 14462      /lib/libpthread.so.0
412    a8024000-a8027000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0
413    a8027000-a8043000 r-xp 00000000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
414    a8043000-a8044000 r--p 0001b000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
415    a8044000-a8045000 rw-p 0001c000 03:00 8317       /lib/ld-linux.so.2
416    aff35000-aff4a000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0          [stack]
417    ffffe000-fffff000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0          [vdso]
418
419where "address" is the address space in the process that it occupies, "perms"
420is a set of permissions::
421
422 r = read
423 w = write
424 x = execute
425 s = shared
426 p = private (copy on write)
427
428"offset" is the offset into the mapping, "dev" is the device (major:minor), and
429"inode" is the inode  on that device.  0 indicates that  no inode is associated
430with the memory region, as the case would be with BSS (uninitialized data).
431The "pathname" shows the name associated file for this mapping.  If the mapping
432is not associated with a file:
433
434 ===================        ===========================================
435 [heap]                     the heap of the program
436 [stack]                    the stack of the main process
437 [vdso]                     the "virtual dynamic shared object",
438                            the kernel system call handler
439 [anon:<name>]              a private anonymous mapping that has been
440                            named by userspace
441 [anon_shmem:<name>]        an anonymous shared memory mapping that has
442                            been named by userspace
443 ===================        ===========================================
444
445 or if empty, the mapping is anonymous.
446
447Starting with 6.11 kernel, /proc/PID/maps provides an alternative
448ioctl()-based API that gives ability to flexibly and efficiently query and
449filter individual VMAs. This interface is binary and is meant for more
450efficient and easy programmatic use. `struct procmap_query`, defined in
451linux/fs.h UAPI header, serves as an input/output argument to the
452`PROCMAP_QUERY` ioctl() command. See comments in linus/fs.h UAPI header for
453details on query semantics, supported flags, data returned, and general API
454usage information.
455
456The /proc/PID/smaps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory
457consumption for each of the process's mappings. For each mapping (aka Virtual
458Memory Area, or VMA) there is a series of lines such as the following::
459
460    08048000-080bc000 r-xp 00000000 03:02 13130      /bin/bash
461
462    Size:               1084 kB
463    KernelPageSize:        4 kB
464    MMUPageSize:           4 kB
465    Rss:                 892 kB
466    Pss:                 374 kB
467    Pss_Dirty:             0 kB
468    Shared_Clean:        892 kB
469    Shared_Dirty:          0 kB
470    Private_Clean:         0 kB
471    Private_Dirty:         0 kB
472    Referenced:          892 kB
473    Anonymous:             0 kB
474    KSM:                   0 kB
475    LazyFree:              0 kB
476    AnonHugePages:         0 kB
477    ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
478    Shared_Hugetlb:        0 kB
479    Private_Hugetlb:       0 kB
480    Swap:                  0 kB
481    SwapPss:               0 kB
482    KernelPageSize:        4 kB
483    MMUPageSize:           4 kB
484    Locked:                0 kB
485    THPeligible:           0
486    VmFlags: rd ex mr mw me dw
487
488The first of these lines shows the same information as is displayed for
489the mapping in /proc/PID/maps.  Following lines show the size of the
490mapping (size); the size of each page allocated when backing a VMA
491(KernelPageSize), which is usually the same as the size in the page table
492entries; the page size used by the MMU when backing a VMA (in most cases,
493the same as KernelPageSize); the amount of the mapping that is currently
494resident in RAM (RSS); the process's proportional share of this mapping
495(PSS); and the number of clean and dirty shared and private pages in the
496mapping.
497
498The "proportional set size" (PSS) of a process is the count of pages it has
499in memory, where each page is divided by the number of processes sharing it.
500So if a process has 1000 pages all to itself, and 1000 shared with one other
501process, its PSS will be 1500.  "Pss_Dirty" is the portion of PSS which
502consists of dirty pages.  ("Pss_Clean" is not included, but it can be
503calculated by subtracting "Pss_Dirty" from "Pss".)
504
505Note that even a page which is part of a MAP_SHARED mapping, but has only
506a single pte mapped, i.e.  is currently used by only one process, is accounted
507as private and not as shared.
508
509"Referenced" indicates the amount of memory currently marked as referenced or
510accessed.
511
512"Anonymous" shows the amount of memory that does not belong to any file.  Even
513a mapping associated with a file may contain anonymous pages: when MAP_PRIVATE
514and a page is modified, the file page is replaced by a private anonymous copy.
515
516"KSM" reports how many of the pages are KSM pages. Note that KSM-placed zeropages
517are not included, only actual KSM pages.
518
519"LazyFree" shows the amount of memory which is marked by madvise(MADV_FREE).
520The memory isn't freed immediately with madvise(). It's freed in memory
521pressure if the memory is clean. Please note that the printed value might
522be lower than the real value due to optimizations used in the current
523implementation. If this is not desirable please file a bug report.
524
525"AnonHugePages" shows the amount of memory backed by transparent hugepage.
526
527"ShmemPmdMapped" shows the amount of shared (shmem/tmpfs) memory backed by
528huge pages.
529
530"Shared_Hugetlb" and "Private_Hugetlb" show the amounts of memory backed by
531hugetlbfs page which is *not* counted in "RSS" or "PSS" field for historical
532reasons. And these are not included in {Shared,Private}_{Clean,Dirty} field.
533
534"Swap" shows how much would-be-anonymous memory is also used, but out on swap.
535
536For shmem mappings, "Swap" includes also the size of the mapped (and not
537replaced by copy-on-write) part of the underlying shmem object out on swap.
538"SwapPss" shows proportional swap share of this mapping. Unlike "Swap", this
539does not take into account swapped out page of underlying shmem objects.
540"Locked" indicates whether the mapping is locked in memory or not.
541
542"THPeligible" indicates whether the mapping is eligible for allocating
543naturally aligned THP pages of any currently enabled size. 1 if true, 0
544otherwise.
545
546"VmFlags" field deserves a separate description. This member represents the
547kernel flags associated with the particular virtual memory area in two letter
548encoded manner. The codes are the following:
549
550    ==    =======================================
551    rd    readable
552    wr    writeable
553    ex    executable
554    sh    shared
555    mr    may read
556    mw    may write
557    me    may execute
558    ms    may share
559    gd    stack segment growns down
560    pf    pure PFN range
561    dw    disabled write to the mapped file
562    lo    pages are locked in memory
563    io    memory mapped I/O area
564    sr    sequential read advise provided
565    rr    random read advise provided
566    dc    do not copy area on fork
567    de    do not expand area on remapping
568    ac    area is accountable
569    nr    swap space is not reserved for the area
570    ht    area uses huge tlb pages
571    sf    synchronous page fault
572    ar    architecture specific flag
573    wf    wipe on fork
574    dd    do not include area into core dump
575    sd    soft dirty flag
576    mm    mixed map area
577    hg    huge page advise flag
578    nh    no huge page advise flag
579    mg    mergeable advise flag
580    bt    arm64 BTI guarded page
581    mt    arm64 MTE allocation tags are enabled
582    um    userfaultfd missing tracking
583    uw    userfaultfd wr-protect tracking
584    ss    shadow/guarded control stack page
585    sl    sealed
586    ==    =======================================
587
588Note that there is no guarantee that every flag and associated mnemonic will
589be present in all further kernel releases. Things get changed, the flags may
590be vanished or the reverse -- new added. Interpretation of their meaning
591might change in future as well. So each consumer of these flags has to
592follow each specific kernel version for the exact semantic.
593
594This file is only present if the CONFIG_MMU kernel configuration option is
595enabled.
596
597Note: reading /proc/PID/maps or /proc/PID/smaps is inherently racy (consistent
598output can be achieved only in the single read call).
599
600This typically manifests when doing partial reads of these files while the
601memory map is being modified.  Despite the races, we do provide the following
602guarantees:
603
6041) The mapped addresses never go backwards, which implies no two
605   regions will ever overlap.
6062) If there is something at a given vaddr during the entirety of the
607   life of the smaps/maps walk, there will be some output for it.
608
609The /proc/PID/smaps_rollup file includes the same fields as /proc/PID/smaps,
610but their values are the sums of the corresponding values for all mappings of
611the process.  Additionally, it contains these fields:
612
613- Pss_Anon
614- Pss_File
615- Pss_Shmem
616
617They represent the proportional shares of anonymous, file, and shmem pages, as
618described for smaps above.  These fields are omitted in smaps since each
619mapping identifies the type (anon, file, or shmem) of all pages it contains.
620Thus all information in smaps_rollup can be derived from smaps, but at a
621significantly higher cost.
622
623The /proc/PID/clear_refs is used to reset the PG_Referenced and ACCESSED/YOUNG
624bits on both physical and virtual pages associated with a process, and the
625soft-dirty bit on pte (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/soft-dirty.rst
626for details).
627To clear the bits for all the pages associated with the process::
628
629    > echo 1 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
630
631To clear the bits for the anonymous pages associated with the process::
632
633    > echo 2 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
634
635To clear the bits for the file mapped pages associated with the process::
636
637    > echo 3 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
638
639To clear the soft-dirty bit::
640
641    > echo 4 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
642
643To reset the peak resident set size ("high water mark") to the process's
644current value::
645
646    > echo 5 > /proc/PID/clear_refs
647
648Any other value written to /proc/PID/clear_refs will have no effect.
649
650The /proc/pid/pagemap gives the PFN, which can be used to find the pageflags
651using /proc/kpageflags and number of times a page is mapped using
652/proc/kpagecount. For detailed explanation, see
653Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst.
654
655The /proc/pid/numa_maps is an extension based on maps, showing the memory
656locality and binding policy, as well as the memory usage (in pages) of
657each mapping. The output follows a general format where mapping details get
658summarized separated by blank spaces, one mapping per each file line::
659
660    address   policy    mapping details
661
662    00400000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app mapped=1 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
663    00600000 default file=/usr/local/bin/app anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
664    3206000000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so mapped=26 mapmax=6 N0=24 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
665    320621f000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
666    3206220000 default file=/lib64/ld-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
667    3206221000 default anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
668    3206800000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so mapped=59 mapmax=21 active=55 N0=41 N3=18 kernelpagesize_kB=4
669    320698b000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so
670    3206b8a000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=2 dirty=2 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
671    3206b8e000 default file=/lib64/libc-2.12.so anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
672    3206b8f000 default anon=3 dirty=3 active=1 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
673    7f4dc10a2000 default anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
674    7f4dc10b4000 default anon=2 dirty=2 active=1 N3=2 kernelpagesize_kB=4
675    7f4dc1200000 default file=/anon_hugepage\040(deleted) huge anon=1 dirty=1 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=2048
676    7fff335f0000 default stack anon=3 dirty=3 N3=3 kernelpagesize_kB=4
677    7fff3369d000 default mapped=1 mapmax=35 active=0 N3=1 kernelpagesize_kB=4
678
679Where:
680
681"address" is the starting address for the mapping;
682
683"policy" reports the NUMA memory policy set for the mapping (see Documentation/admin-guide/mm/numa_memory_policy.rst);
684
685"mapping details" summarizes mapping data such as mapping type, page usage counters,
686node locality page counters (N0 == node0, N1 == node1, ...) and the kernel page
687size, in KB, that is backing the mapping up.
688
6891.2 Kernel data
690---------------
691
692Similar to  the  process entries, the kernel data files give information about
693the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in
694/proc and  are  listed  in Table 1-5. Not all of these will be present in your
695system. It  depends  on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which
696files are there, and which are missing.
697
698.. table:: Table 1-5: Kernel info in /proc
699
700 ============ ===============================================================
701 File         Content
702 ============ ===============================================================
703 allocinfo    Memory allocations profiling information
704 apm          Advanced power management info
705 bootconfig   Kernel command line obtained from boot config,
706 	      and, if there were kernel parameters from the
707	      boot loader, a "# Parameters from bootloader:"
708	      line followed by a line containing those
709	      parameters prefixed by "# ".			(5.5)
710 buddyinfo    Kernel memory allocator information (see text)	(2.5)
711 bus          Directory containing bus specific information
712 cmdline      Kernel command line, both from bootloader and embedded
713              in the kernel image
714 cpuinfo      Info about the CPU
715 devices      Available devices (block and character)
716 dma          Used DMS channels
717 filesystems  Supported filesystems
718 driver       Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc	(2.4)
719 execdomains  Execdomains, related to security			(2.4)
720 fb 	      Frame Buffer devices				(2.4)
721 fs 	      File system parameters, currently nfs/exports	(2.4)
722 ide          Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem
723 interrupts   Interrupt usage
724 iomem 	      Memory map					(2.4)
725 ioports      I/O port usage
726 irq 	      Masks for irq to cpu affinity			(2.4)(smp?)
727 isapnp       ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info				(2.4)
728 kcore        Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4))
729 kmsg         Kernel messages
730 ksyms        Kernel symbol table
731 loadavg      Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes;
732                number of processes currently runnable (running or on ready queue);
733                total number of processes in system;
734                last pid created.
735                All fields are separated by one space except "number of
736                processes currently runnable" and "total number of processes
737                in system", which are separated by a slash ('/'). Example:
738                0.61 0.61 0.55 3/828 22084
739 locks        Kernel locks
740 meminfo      Memory info
741 misc         Miscellaneous
742 modules      List of loaded modules
743 mounts       Mounted filesystems
744 net          Networking info (see text)
745 pagetypeinfo Additional page allocator information (see text)  (2.5)
746 partitions   Table of partitions known to the system
747 pci 	      Deprecated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/,
748              decoupled by lspci				(2.4)
749 rtc          Real time clock
750 scsi         SCSI info (see text)
751 slabinfo     Slab pool info
752 softirqs     softirq usage
753 stat         Overall statistics
754 swaps        Swap space utilization
755 sys          See chapter 2
756 sysvipc      Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm)		(2.4)
757 tty 	      Info of tty drivers
758 uptime       Wall clock since boot, combined idle time of all cpus
759 version      Kernel version
760 video 	      bttv info of video resources			(2.4)
761 vmallocinfo  Show vmalloced areas
762 ============ ===============================================================
763
764You can,  for  example,  check  which interrupts are currently in use and what
765they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts::
766
767  > cat /proc/interrupts
768             CPU0
769    0:    8728810          XT-PIC  timer
770    1:        895          XT-PIC  keyboard
771    2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
772    3:     531695          XT-PIC  aha152x
773    4:    2014133          XT-PIC  serial
774    5:      44401          XT-PIC  pcnet_cs
775    8:          2          XT-PIC  rtc
776   11:          8          XT-PIC  i82365
777   12:     182918          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse
778   13:          1          XT-PIC  fpu
779   14:    1232265          XT-PIC  ide0
780   15:          7          XT-PIC  ide1
781  NMI:          0
782
783In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the
784output of a SMP machine)::
785
786  > cat /proc/interrupts
787
788             CPU0       CPU1
789    0:    1243498    1214548    IO-APIC-edge  timer
790    1:       8949       8958    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
791    2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
792    5:      11286      10161    IO-APIC-edge  soundblaster
793    8:          1          0    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
794    9:      27422      27407    IO-APIC-edge  3c503
795   12:     113645     113873    IO-APIC-edge  PS/2 Mouse
796   13:          0          0          XT-PIC  fpu
797   14:      22491      24012    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
798   15:       2183       2415    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
799   17:      30564      30414   IO-APIC-level  eth0
800   18:        177        164   IO-APIC-level  bttv
801  NMI:    2457961    2457959
802  LOC:    2457882    2457881
803  ERR:       2155
804
805NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI
806(Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.
807
808LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.
809
810ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that
811connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected,
812the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big
813problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.
814
815In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again.  This time the goal was for
816/proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not
817just those considered 'most important'.  The new vectors are:
818
819THR
820  interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter
821  (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds
822  a configurable threshold.  Only available on some systems.
823
824TRM
825  a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold
826  has been exceeded for the CPU.  This interrupt may also be generated
827  when the temperature drops back to normal.
828
829SPU
830  a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered
831  by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC.  Hence
832  the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from.
833  For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector
834  of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.
835
836RES, CAL, TLB
837  rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are
838  sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS.  Typically,
839  their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to
840  determine the occurrence of interrupts of the given type.
841
842The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevant.  For example,
843the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms.  Others are
844suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor.  As of this writing, only
845i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.
846
847Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4.
848It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity. This means that you can "hook" an
849IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the
850irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and two files; default_smp_affinity and
851prof_cpu_mask.
852
853For example::
854
855  > ls /proc/irq/
856  0  10  12  14  16  18  2  4  6  8  prof_cpu_mask
857  1  11  13  15  17  19  3  5  7  9  default_smp_affinity
858  > ls /proc/irq/0/
859  smp_affinity
860
861smp_affinity is a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the
862IRQ. You can set it by doing::
863
864  > echo 1 > /proc/irq/10/smp_affinity
865
866This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo
8675 which means that only the first and third CPU can handle the IRQ.
868
869The contents of each smp_affinity file is the same by default::
870
871  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity
872  ffffffff
873
874There is an alternate interface, smp_affinity_list which allows specifying
875a CPU range instead of a bitmask::
876
877  > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity_list
878  1024-1031
879
880The default_smp_affinity mask applies to all non-active IRQs, which are the
881IRQs which have not yet been allocated/activated, and hence which lack a
882/proc/irq/[0-9]* directory.
883
884The node file on an SMP system shows the node to which the device using the IRQ
885reports itself as being attached. This hardware locality information does not
886include information about any possible driver locality preference.
887
888prof_cpu_mask specifies which CPUs are to be profiled by the system wide
889profiler. Default value is ffffffff (all CPUs if there are only 32 of them).
890
891The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin
892between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has
893more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the
894best choice for almost everyone.  [Note this applies only to those IO-APIC's
895that support "Round Robin" interrupt distribution.]
896
897There are  three  more  important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys.
898The general  rule  is  that  the  contents,  or  even  the  existence of these
899directories, depend  on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the
900directory scsi  may  not  exist. The same is true with the net, which is there
901only when networking support is present in the running kernel.
902
903The slabinfo  file  gives  information  about  memory usage at the slab level.
904Linux uses  slab  pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2.
905Commonly used  objects  have  their  own  slab  pool (such as network buffers,
906directory cache, and so on).
907
908::
909
910    > cat /proc/buddyinfo
911
912    Node 0, zone      DMA      0      4      5      4      4      3 ...
913    Node 0, zone   Normal      1      0      0      1    101      8 ...
914    Node 0, zone  HighMem      2      0      0      1      1      0 ...
915
916External fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a
917useful tool for helping diagnose these problems.  Buddyinfo will give you a
918clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous
919allocation failed.
920
921Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are
922available.  In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in
923ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE
924available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc...
925
926More information relevant to external fragmentation can be found in
927pagetypeinfo::
928
929    > cat /proc/pagetypeinfo
930    Page block order: 9
931    Pages per block:  512
932
933    Free pages count per migrate type at order       0      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9     10
934    Node    0, zone      DMA, type    Unmovable      0      0      0      1      1      1      1      1      1      1      0
935    Node    0, zone      DMA, type  Reclaimable      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
936    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Movable      1      1      2      1      2      1      1      0      1      0      2
937    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Reserve      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      1      0
938    Node    0, zone      DMA, type      Isolate      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
939    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type    Unmovable    103     54     77      1      1      1     11      8      7      1      9
940    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type  Reclaimable      0      0      2      1      0      0      0      0      1      0      0
941    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Movable    169    152    113     91     77     54     39     13      6      1    452
942    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Reserve      1      2      2      2      2      0      1      1      1      1      0
943    Node    0, zone    DMA32, type      Isolate      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0
944
945    Number of blocks type     Unmovable  Reclaimable      Movable      Reserve      Isolate
946    Node 0, zone      DMA            2            0            5            1            0
947    Node 0, zone    DMA32           41            6          967            2            0
948
949Fragmentation avoidance in the kernel works by grouping pages of different
950migrate types into the same contiguous regions of memory called page blocks.
951A page block is typically the size of the default hugepage size, e.g. 2MB on
952X86-64. By keeping pages grouped based on their ability to move, the kernel
953can reclaim pages within a page block to satisfy a high-order allocation.
954
955The pagetypinfo begins with information on the size of a page block. It
956then gives the same type of information as buddyinfo except broken down
957by migrate-type and finishes with details on how many page blocks of each
958type exist.
959
960If min_free_kbytes has been tuned correctly (recommendations made by hugeadm
961from libhugetlbfs https://github.com/libhugetlbfs/libhugetlbfs/), one can
962make an estimate of the likely number of huge pages that can be allocated
963at a given point in time. All the "Movable" blocks should be allocatable
964unless memory has been mlock()'d. Some of the Reclaimable blocks should
965also be allocatable although a lot of filesystem metadata may have to be
966reclaimed to achieve this.
967
968
969allocinfo
970~~~~~~~~~
971
972Provides information about memory allocations at all locations in the code
973base. Each allocation in the code is identified by its source file, line
974number, module (if originates from a loadable module) and the function calling
975the allocation. The number of bytes allocated and number of calls at each
976location are reported. The first line indicates the version of the file, the
977second line is the header listing fields in the file.
978
979Example output.
980
981::
982
983    > tail -n +3 /proc/allocinfo | sort -rn
984   127664128    31168 mm/page_ext.c:270 func:alloc_page_ext
985    56373248     4737 mm/slub.c:2259 func:alloc_slab_page
986    14880768     3633 mm/readahead.c:247 func:page_cache_ra_unbounded
987    14417920     3520 mm/mm_init.c:2530 func:alloc_large_system_hash
988    13377536      234 block/blk-mq.c:3421 func:blk_mq_alloc_rqs
989    11718656     2861 mm/filemap.c:1919 func:__filemap_get_folio
990     9192960     2800 kernel/fork.c:307 func:alloc_thread_stack_node
991     4206592        4 net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c:2567 func:nf_ct_alloc_hashtable
992     4136960     1010 drivers/staging/ctagmod/ctagmod.c:20 [ctagmod] func:ctagmod_start
993     3940352      962 mm/memory.c:4214 func:alloc_anon_folio
994     2894464    22613 fs/kernfs/dir.c:615 func:__kernfs_new_node
995     ...
996
997
998meminfo
999~~~~~~~
1000
1001Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory.  This
1002varies by architecture and compile options.  Some of the counters reported
1003here overlap.  The memory reported by the non overlapping counters may not
1004add up to the overall memory usage and the difference for some workloads
1005can be substantial.  In many cases there are other means to find out
1006additional memory using subsystem specific interfaces, for instance
1007/proc/net/sockstat for TCP memory allocations.
1008
1009Example output. You may not have all of these fields.
1010
1011::
1012
1013    > cat /proc/meminfo
1014
1015    MemTotal:       32858820 kB
1016    MemFree:        21001236 kB
1017    MemAvailable:   27214312 kB
1018    Buffers:          581092 kB
1019    Cached:          5587612 kB
1020    SwapCached:            0 kB
1021    Active:          3237152 kB
1022    Inactive:        7586256 kB
1023    Active(anon):      94064 kB
1024    Inactive(anon):  4570616 kB
1025    Active(file):    3143088 kB
1026    Inactive(file):  3015640 kB
1027    Unevictable:           0 kB
1028    Mlocked:               0 kB
1029    SwapTotal:             0 kB
1030    SwapFree:              0 kB
1031    Zswap:              1904 kB
1032    Zswapped:           7792 kB
1033    Dirty:                12 kB
1034    Writeback:             0 kB
1035    AnonPages:       4654780 kB
1036    Mapped:           266244 kB
1037    Shmem:              9976 kB
1038    KReclaimable:     517708 kB
1039    Slab:             660044 kB
1040    SReclaimable:     517708 kB
1041    SUnreclaim:       142336 kB
1042    KernelStack:       11168 kB
1043    PageTables:        20540 kB
1044    SecPageTables:         0 kB
1045    NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
1046    Bounce:                0 kB
1047    WritebackTmp:          0 kB
1048    CommitLimit:    16429408 kB
1049    Committed_AS:    7715148 kB
1050    VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
1051    VmallocUsed:       40444 kB
1052    VmallocChunk:          0 kB
1053    Percpu:            29312 kB
1054    EarlyMemtestBad:       0 kB
1055    HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
1056    AnonHugePages:   4149248 kB
1057    ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
1058    ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
1059    FileHugePages:         0 kB
1060    FilePmdMapped:         0 kB
1061    CmaTotal:              0 kB
1062    CmaFree:               0 kB
1063    HugePages_Total:       0
1064    HugePages_Free:        0
1065    HugePages_Rsvd:        0
1066    HugePages_Surp:        0
1067    Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
1068    Hugetlb:               0 kB
1069    DirectMap4k:      401152 kB
1070    DirectMap2M:    10008576 kB
1071    DirectMap1G:    24117248 kB
1072
1073MemTotal
1074              Total usable RAM (i.e. physical RAM minus a few reserved
1075              bits and the kernel binary code)
1076MemFree
1077              Total free RAM. On highmem systems, the sum of LowFree+HighFree
1078MemAvailable
1079              An estimate of how much memory is available for starting new
1080              applications, without swapping. Calculated from MemFree,
1081              SReclaimable, the size of the file LRU lists, and the low
1082              watermarks in each zone.
1083              The estimate takes into account that the system needs some
1084              page cache to function well, and that not all reclaimable
1085              slab will be reclaimable, due to items being in use. The
1086              impact of those factors will vary from system to system.
1087Buffers
1088              Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
1089              shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
1090Cached
1091              In-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
1092              pagecache) as well as tmpfs & shmem.
1093              Doesn't include SwapCached.
1094SwapCached
1095              Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but
1096              still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it
1097              doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already
1098              in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
1099Active
1100              Memory that has been used more recently and usually not
1101              reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
1102Inactive
1103              Memory which has been less recently used.  It is more
1104              eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
1105Unevictable
1106              Memory allocated for userspace which cannot be reclaimed, such
1107              as mlocked pages, ramfs backing pages, secret memfd pages etc.
1108Mlocked
1109              Memory locked with mlock().
1110HighTotal, HighFree
1111              Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory.
1112              Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or
1113              for the pagecache.  The kernel must use tricks to access
1114              this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
1115LowTotal, LowFree
1116              Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that
1117              highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the
1118              kernel's use for its own data structures.  Among many
1119              other things, it is where everything from the Slab is
1120              allocated.  Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
1121SwapTotal
1122              total amount of swap space available
1123SwapFree
1124              Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily
1125              on the disk
1126Zswap
1127              Memory consumed by the zswap backend (compressed size)
1128Zswapped
1129              Amount of anonymous memory stored in zswap (original size)
1130Dirty
1131              Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
1132Writeback
1133              Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
1134AnonPages
1135              Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables
1136Mapped
1137              files which have been mmapped, such as libraries
1138Shmem
1139              Total memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs
1140KReclaimable
1141              Kernel allocations that the kernel will attempt to reclaim
1142              under memory pressure. Includes SReclaimable (below), and other
1143              direct allocations with a shrinker.
1144Slab
1145              in-kernel data structures cache
1146SReclaimable
1147              Part of Slab, that might be reclaimed, such as caches
1148SUnreclaim
1149              Part of Slab, that cannot be reclaimed on memory pressure
1150KernelStack
1151              Memory consumed by the kernel stacks of all tasks
1152PageTables
1153              Memory consumed by userspace page tables
1154SecPageTables
1155              Memory consumed by secondary page tables, this currently includes
1156              KVM mmu and IOMMU allocations on x86 and arm64.
1157NFS_Unstable
1158              Always zero. Previous counted pages which had been written to
1159              the server, but has not been committed to stable storage.
1160Bounce
1161              Memory used for block device "bounce buffers"
1162WritebackTmp
1163              Memory used by FUSE for temporary writeback buffers
1164CommitLimit
1165              Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'),
1166              this is the total amount of  memory currently available to
1167              be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to
1168              if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in
1169              'vm.overcommit_memory').
1170
1171              The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula::
1172
1173                CommitLimit = ([total RAM pages] - [total huge TLB pages]) *
1174                               overcommit_ratio / 100 + [total swap pages]
1175
1176              For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G
1177              of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would
1178              yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
1179
1180              For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation
1181              in mm/overcommit-accounting.
1182Committed_AS
1183              The amount of memory presently allocated on the system.
1184              The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which
1185              has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been
1186              "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G
1187              of memory, but only touches 300M of it will show up as
1188              using 1G. This 1G is memory which has been "committed" to
1189              by the VM and can be used at any time by the allocating
1190              application. With strict overcommit enabled on the system
1191              (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'), allocations which would
1192              exceed the CommitLimit (detailed above) will not be permitted.
1193              This is useful if one needs to guarantee that processes will
1194              not fail due to lack of memory once that memory has been
1195              successfully allocated.
1196VmallocTotal
1197              total size of vmalloc virtual address space
1198VmallocUsed
1199              amount of vmalloc area which is used
1200VmallocChunk
1201              largest contiguous block of vmalloc area which is free
1202Percpu
1203              Memory allocated to the percpu allocator used to back percpu
1204              allocations. This stat excludes the cost of metadata.
1205EarlyMemtestBad
1206              The amount of RAM/memory in kB, that was identified as corrupted
1207              by early memtest. If memtest was not run, this field will not
1208              be displayed at all. Size is never rounded down to 0 kB.
1209              That means if 0 kB is reported, you can safely assume
1210              there was at least one pass of memtest and none of the passes
1211              found a single faulty byte of RAM.
1212HardwareCorrupted
1213              The amount of RAM/memory in KB, the kernel identifies as
1214              corrupted.
1215AnonHugePages
1216              Non-file backed huge pages mapped into userspace page tables
1217ShmemHugePages
1218              Memory used by shared memory (shmem) and tmpfs allocated
1219              with huge pages
1220ShmemPmdMapped
1221              Shared memory mapped into userspace with huge pages
1222FileHugePages
1223              Memory used for filesystem data (page cache) allocated
1224              with huge pages
1225FilePmdMapped
1226              Page cache mapped into userspace with huge pages
1227CmaTotal
1228              Memory reserved for the Contiguous Memory Allocator (CMA)
1229CmaFree
1230              Free remaining memory in the CMA reserves
1231HugePages_Total, HugePages_Free, HugePages_Rsvd, HugePages_Surp, Hugepagesize, Hugetlb
1232              See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst.
1233DirectMap4k, DirectMap2M, DirectMap1G
1234              Breakdown of page table sizes used in the kernel's
1235              identity mapping of RAM
1236
1237vmallocinfo
1238~~~~~~~~~~~
1239
1240Provides information about vmalloced/vmaped areas. One line per area,
1241containing the virtual address range of the area, size in bytes,
1242caller information of the creator, and optional information depending
1243on the kind of area:
1244
1245 ==========  ===================================================
1246 pages=nr    number of pages
1247 phys=addr   if a physical address was specified
1248 ioremap     I/O mapping (ioremap() and friends)
1249 vmalloc     vmalloc() area
1250 vmap        vmap()ed pages
1251 user        VM_USERMAP area
1252 vpages      buffer for pages pointers was vmalloced (huge area)
1253 N<node>=nr  (Only on NUMA kernels)
1254             Number of pages allocated on memory node <node>
1255 ==========  ===================================================
1256
1257::
1258
1259    > cat /proc/vmallocinfo
1260    0xffffc20000000000-0xffffc20000201000 2101248 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
1261    /0x2c0 pages=512 vmalloc N0=128 N1=128 N2=128 N3=128
1262    0xffffc20000201000-0xffffc20000302000 1052672 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
1263    /0x2c0 pages=256 vmalloc N0=64 N1=64 N2=64 N3=64
1264    0xffffc20000302000-0xffffc20000304000    8192 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
1265    phys=7fee8000 ioremap
1266    0xffffc20000304000-0xffffc20000307000   12288 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
1267    phys=7fee7000 ioremap
1268    0xffffc2000031d000-0xffffc2000031f000    8192 init_vdso_vars+0x112/0x210
1269    0xffffc2000031f000-0xffffc2000032b000   49152 cramfs_uncompress_init+0x2e ...
1270    /0x80 pages=11 vmalloc N0=3 N1=3 N2=2 N3=3
1271    0xffffc2000033a000-0xffffc2000033d000   12288 sys_swapon+0x640/0xac0      ...
1272    pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
1273    0xffffc20000347000-0xffffc2000034c000   20480 xt_alloc_table_info+0xfe ...
1274    /0x130 [x_tables] pages=4 vmalloc N0=4
1275    0xffffffffa0000000-0xffffffffa000f000   61440 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1276    pages=14 vmalloc N2=14
1277    0xffffffffa000f000-0xffffffffa0014000   20480 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1278    pages=4 vmalloc N1=4
1279    0xffffffffa0014000-0xffffffffa0017000   12288 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1280    pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
1281    0xffffffffa0017000-0xffffffffa0022000   45056 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
1282    pages=10 vmalloc N0=10
1283
1284
1285softirqs
1286~~~~~~~~
1287
1288Provides counts of softirq handlers serviced since boot time, for each CPU.
1289
1290::
1291
1292    > cat /proc/softirqs
1293		  CPU0       CPU1       CPU2       CPU3
1294	HI:          0          0          0          0
1295    TIMER:       27166      27120      27097      27034
1296    NET_TX:          0          0          0         17
1297    NET_RX:         42          0          0         39
1298    BLOCK:           0          0        107       1121
1299    TASKLET:         0          0          0        290
1300    SCHED:       27035      26983      26971      26746
1301    HRTIMER:         0          0          0          0
1302	RCU:      1678       1769       2178       2250
1303
13041.3 Networking info in /proc/net
1305--------------------------------
1306
1307The subdirectory  /proc/net  follows  the  usual  pattern. Table 1-8 shows the
1308additional values  you  get  for  IP  version 6 if you configure the kernel to
1309support this. Table 1-9 lists the files and their meaning.
1310
1311
1312.. table:: Table 1-8: IPv6 info in /proc/net
1313
1314 ========== =====================================================
1315 File       Content
1316 ========== =====================================================
1317 udp6       UDP sockets (IPv6)
1318 tcp6       TCP sockets (IPv6)
1319 raw6       Raw device statistics (IPv6)
1320 igmp6      IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6)
1321 if_inet6   List of IPv6 interface addresses
1322 ipv6_route Kernel routing table for IPv6
1323 rt6_stats  Global IPv6 routing tables statistics
1324 sockstat6  Socket statistics (IPv6)
1325 snmp6      Snmp data (IPv6)
1326 ========== =====================================================
1327
1328.. table:: Table 1-9: Network info in /proc/net
1329
1330 ============= ================================================================
1331 File          Content
1332 ============= ================================================================
1333 arp           Kernel  ARP table
1334 dev           network devices with statistics
1335 dev_mcast     the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too
1336               (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound
1337               addresses).
1338 dev_stat      network device status
1339 ip_fwchains   Firewall chain linkage
1340 ip_fwnames    Firewall chain names
1341 ip_masq       Directory containing the masquerading tables
1342 ip_masquerade Major masquerading table
1343 netstat       Network statistics
1344 raw           raw device statistics
1345 route         Kernel routing table
1346 rpc           Directory containing rpc info
1347 rt_cache      Routing cache
1348 snmp          SNMP data
1349 sockstat      Socket statistics
1350 softnet_stat  Per-CPU incoming packets queues statistics of online CPUs
1351 tcp           TCP  sockets
1352 udp           UDP sockets
1353 unix          UNIX domain sockets
1354 wireless      Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc)
1355 igmp          IP multicast addresses, which this host joined
1356 psched        Global packet scheduler parameters.
1357 netlink       List of PF_NETLINK sockets
1358 ip_mr_vifs    List of multicast virtual interfaces
1359 ip_mr_cache   List of multicast routing cache
1360 ============= ================================================================
1361
1362You can  use  this  information  to see which network devices are available in
1363your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices::
1364
1365  > cat /proc/net/dev
1366  Inter-|Receive                                                   |[...
1367   face |bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[...
1368      lo:  908188   5596     0    0    0     0          0         0 [...
1369    ppp0:15475140  20721   410    0    0   410          0         0 [...
1370    eth0:  614530   7085     0    0    0     0          0         1 [...
1371
1372  ...] Transmit
1373  ...] bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
1374  ...]  908188     5596    0    0    0     0       0          0
1375  ...] 1375103    17405    0    0    0     0       0          0
1376  ...] 1703981     5535    0    0    0     3       0          0
1377
1378In addition, each Channel Bond interface has its own directory.  For
1379example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/.
1380It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the
1381current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how
1382many times the slaves link has failed.
1383
13841.4 SCSI info
1385-------------
1386
1387If you have a SCSI or ATA host adapter in your system, you'll find a
1388subdirectory named after the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi.
1389You'll also see a list of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi::
1390
1391  >cat /proc/scsi/scsi
1392  Attached devices:
1393  Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
1394    Vendor: IBM      Model: DGHS09U          Rev: 03E0
1395    Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 03
1396  Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
1397    Vendor: PIONEER  Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S   Rev: 1.04
1398    Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI SCSI revision: 02
1399
1400
1401The directory  named  after  the driver has one file for each adapter found in
1402the system.  These  files  contain information about the controller, including
1403the used  IRQ  and  the  IO  address range. The amount of information shown is
1404dependent on  the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec
1405AHA-2940 SCSI adapter::
1406
1407  > cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0
1408
1409  Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4
1410  Compile Options:
1411    TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled
1412    AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS     : Disabled
1413    AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY    : 5
1414  Adapter Configuration:
1415             SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter
1416                             Ultra Wide Controller
1417      PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000
1418   Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used.
1419        Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled
1420                      IRQ: 10
1421                     SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2,
1422                           Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255
1423               Interrupts: 160328
1424        BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6
1425     Adapter Control Word: 0x005b
1426     Extended Translation: Enabled
1427  Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff
1428       Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001
1429   Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000
1430  Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000
1431  Default Tag Queue Depth: 8
1432      Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0:
1433        {255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255}
1434      Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0:
1435        {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
1436  Statistics:
1437  (scsi0:0:0:0)
1438    Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8
1439    Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0)
1440    Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes)
1441  (scsi0:0:6:0)
1442    Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15
1443    Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0)
1444    Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes)
1445
1446
14471.5 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
1448---------------------------------------
1449
1450The directory  /proc/parport  contains information about the parallel ports of
1451your system.  It  has  one  subdirectory  for  each port, named after the port
1452number (0,1,2,...).
1453
1454These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-10.
1455
1456
1457.. table:: Table 1-10: Files in /proc/parport
1458
1459 ========= ====================================================================
1460 File      Content
1461 ========= ====================================================================
1462 autoprobe Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired.
1463 devices   list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the
1464           name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear
1465           against any).
1466 hardware  Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel.
1467 irq       IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate
1468           file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ
1469           number or none).
1470 ========= ====================================================================
1471
14721.6 TTY info in /proc/tty
1473-------------------------
1474
1475Information about  the  available  and actually used tty's can be found in the
1476directory /proc/tty. You'll find  entries  for drivers and line disciplines in
1477this directory, as shown in Table 1-11.
1478
1479
1480.. table:: Table 1-11: Files in /proc/tty
1481
1482 ============= ==============================================
1483 File          Content
1484 ============= ==============================================
1485 drivers       list of drivers and their usage
1486 ldiscs        registered line disciplines
1487 driver/serial usage statistic and status of single tty lines
1488 ============= ==============================================
1489
1490To see  which  tty's  are  currently in use, you can simply look into the file
1491/proc/tty/drivers::
1492
1493  > cat /proc/tty/drivers
1494  pty_slave            /dev/pts      136   0-255 pty:slave
1495  pty_master           /dev/ptm      128   0-255 pty:master
1496  pty_slave            /dev/ttyp       3   0-255 pty:slave
1497  pty_master           /dev/pty        2   0-255 pty:master
1498  serial               /dev/cua        5   64-67 serial:callout
1499  serial               /dev/ttyS       4   64-67 serial
1500  /dev/tty0            /dev/tty0       4       0 system:vtmaster
1501  /dev/ptmx            /dev/ptmx       5       2 system
1502  /dev/console         /dev/console    5       1 system:console
1503  /dev/tty             /dev/tty        5       0 system:/dev/tty
1504  unknown              /dev/tty        4    1-63 console
1505
1506
15071.7 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
1508-------------------------------------------------
1509
1510Various pieces   of  information about  kernel activity  are  available in the
1511/proc/stat file.  All  of  the numbers reported  in  this file are  aggregates
1512since the system first booted.  For a quick look, simply cat the file::
1513
1514  > cat /proc/stat
1515  cpu  237902850 368826709 106375398 1873517540 1135548 0 14507935 0 0 0
1516  cpu0 60045249 91891769 26331539 468411416 495718 0 5739640 0 0 0
1517  cpu1 59746288 91759249 26609887 468860630 312281 0 4384817 0 0 0
1518  cpu2 59489247 92985423 26904446 467808813 171668 0 2268998 0 0 0
1519  cpu3 58622065 92190267 26529524 468436680 155879 0 2114478 0 0 0
1520  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>
1521  ctxt 22848221062
1522  btime 1605316999
1523  processes 746787147
1524  procs_running 2
1525  procs_blocked 0
1526  softirq 12121874454 100099120 3938138295 127375644 2795979 187870761 0 173808342 3072582055 52608 224184354
1527
1528The very first  "cpu" line aggregates the  numbers in all  of the other "cpuN"
1529lines.  These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing
1530different kinds of work.  Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a
1531second).  The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
1532
1533- user: normal processes executing in user mode
1534- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
1535- system: processes executing in kernel mode
1536- idle: twiddling thumbs
1537- iowait: In a word, iowait stands for waiting for I/O to complete. But there
1538  are several problems:
1539
1540  1. CPU will not wait for I/O to complete, iowait is the time that a task is
1541     waiting for I/O to complete. When CPU goes into idle state for
1542     outstanding task I/O, another task will be scheduled on this CPU.
1543  2. In a multi-core CPU, the task waiting for I/O to complete is not running
1544     on any CPU, so the iowait of each CPU is difficult to calculate.
1545  3. The value of iowait field in /proc/stat will decrease in certain
1546     conditions.
1547
1548  So, the iowait is not reliable by reading from /proc/stat.
1549- irq: servicing interrupts
1550- softirq: servicing softirqs
1551- steal: involuntary wait
1552- guest: running a normal guest
1553- guest_nice: running a niced guest
1554
1555The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts  serviced since boot time, for each
1556of the  possible system interrupts.   The first  column  is the  total of  all
1557interrupts serviced  including  unnumbered  architecture specific  interrupts;
1558each  subsequent column is the  total for that particular numbered interrupt.
1559Unnumbered interrupts are not shown, only summed into the total.
1560
1561The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.
1562
1563The "btime" line gives  the time at which the  system booted, in seconds since
1564the Unix epoch.
1565
1566The "processes" line gives the number  of processes and threads created, which
1567includes (but  is not limited  to) those  created by  calls to the  fork() and
1568clone() system calls.
1569
1570The "procs_running" line gives the total number of threads that are
1571running or ready to run (i.e., the total number of runnable threads).
1572
1573The   "procs_blocked" line gives  the  number of  processes currently blocked,
1574waiting for I/O to complete.
1575
1576The "softirq" line gives counts of softirqs serviced since boot time, for each
1577of the possible system softirqs. The first column is the total of all
1578softirqs serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular
1579softirq.
1580
1581
15821.8 Ext4 file system parameters
1583-------------------------------
1584
1585Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in
1586/proc/fs/ext4.  Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
1587/proc/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /proc/fs/ext4/hdc or
1588/proc/fs/ext4/sda9 or /proc/fs/ext4/dm-0).   The files in each per-device
1589directory are shown in Table 1-12, below.
1590
1591.. table:: Table 1-12: Files in /proc/fs/ext4/<devname>
1592
1593 ==============  ==========================================================
1594 File            Content
1595 mb_groups       details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks
1596 ==============  ==========================================================
1597
15981.9 /proc/consoles
1599-------------------
1600Shows registered system console lines.
1601
1602To see which character device lines are currently used for the system console
1603/dev/console, you may simply look into the file /proc/consoles::
1604
1605  > cat /proc/consoles
1606  tty0                 -WU (ECp)       4:7
1607  ttyS0                -W- (Ep)        4:64
1608
1609The columns are:
1610
1611+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1612| device             | name of the device                                    |
1613+====================+=======================================================+
1614| operations         | * R = can do read operations                          |
1615|                    | * W = can do write operations                         |
1616|                    | * U = can do unblank                                  |
1617+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1618| flags              | * E = it is enabled                                   |
1619|                    | * C = it is preferred console                         |
1620|                    | * B = it is primary boot console                      |
1621|                    | * p = it is used for printk buffer                    |
1622|                    | * b = it is not a TTY but a Braille device            |
1623|                    | * a = it is safe to use when cpu is offline           |
1624+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1625| major:minor        | major and minor number of the device separated by a   |
1626|                    | colon                                                 |
1627+--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+
1628
1629Summary
1630-------
1631
1632The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only
1633allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status
1634by reading files in the hierarchy.
1635
1636The directory  structure  of /proc reflects the types of information and makes
1637it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data.
1638
1639Chapter 2: Modifying System Parameters
1640======================================
1641
1642In This Chapter
1643---------------
1644
1645* Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys
1646* Exploring the files which modify certain parameters
1647* Review of the /proc/sys file tree
1648
1649------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1650
1651A very  interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only
1652a source  of  information,  it also allows you to change parameters within the
1653kernel. Be  very  careful  when attempting this. You can optimize your system,
1654but you  can  also  cause  it  to  crash.  Never  alter kernel parameters on a
1655production system.  Set  up  a  development machine and test to make sure that
1656everything works  the  way  you want it to. You may have no alternative but to
1657reboot the machine once an error has been made.
1658
1659To change  a  value,  simply  echo  the new value into the file.
1660You need to be root to do this. You  can  create  your  own  boot script
1661to perform this every time your system boots.
1662
1663The files  in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and
1664general things  in  the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files
1665can inadvertently  disrupt  your  system,  it  is  advisable  to  read  both
1666documentation and  source  before actually making adjustments. In any case, be
1667very careful  when  writing  to  any  of these files. The entries in /proc may
1668change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt
1669review the kernel documentation in the directory linux/Documentation.
1670This chapter  is  heavily  based  on the documentation included in the pre 2.2
1671kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel.
1672
1673Please see: Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/ directory for descriptions of
1674these entries.
1675
1676Summary
1677-------
1678
1679Certain aspects  of  kernel  behavior  can be modified at runtime, without the
1680need to  recompile  the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the
1681/proc/sys tree  can  not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo
1682command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings
1683of the kernel.
1684
1685
1686Chapter 3: Per-process Parameters
1687=================================
1688
16893.1 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj & /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj- Adjust the oom-killer score
1690--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1691
1692These files can be used to adjust the badness heuristic used to select which
1693process gets killed in out of memory (oom) conditions.
1694
1695The badness heuristic assigns a value to each candidate task ranging from 0
1696(never kill) to 1000 (always kill) to determine which process is targeted.  The
1697units are roughly a proportion along that range of allowed memory the process
1698may allocate from based on an estimation of its current memory and swap use.
1699For example, if a task is using all allowed memory, its badness score will be
17001000.  If it is using half of its allowed memory, its score will be 500.
1701
1702The amount of "allowed" memory depends on the context in which the oom killer
1703was called.  If it is due to the memory assigned to the allocating task's cpuset
1704being exhausted, the allowed memory represents the set of mems assigned to that
1705cpuset.  If it is due to a mempolicy's node(s) being exhausted, the allowed
1706memory represents the set of mempolicy nodes.  If it is due to a memory
1707limit (or swap limit) being reached, the allowed memory is that configured
1708limit.  Finally, if it is due to the entire system being out of memory, the
1709allowed memory represents all allocatable resources.
1710
1711The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj is added to the badness score before it
1712is used to determine which task to kill.  Acceptable values range from -1000
1713(OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MIN) to +1000 (OOM_SCORE_ADJ_MAX).  This allows userspace to
1714polarize the preference for oom killing either by always preferring a certain
1715task or completely disabling it.  The lowest possible value, -1000, is
1716equivalent to disabling oom killing entirely for that task since it will always
1717report a badness score of 0.
1718
1719Consequently, it is very simple for userspace to define the amount of memory to
1720consider for each task.  Setting a /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj value of +500, for
1721example, is roughly equivalent to allowing the remainder of tasks sharing the
1722same system, cpuset, mempolicy, or memory controller resources to use at least
172350% more memory.  A value of -500, on the other hand, would be roughly
1724equivalent to discounting 50% of the task's allowed memory from being considered
1725as scoring against the task.
1726
1727For backwards compatibility with previous kernels, /proc/<pid>/oom_adj may also
1728be used to tune the badness score.  Its acceptable values range from -16
1729(OOM_ADJUST_MIN) to +15 (OOM_ADJUST_MAX) and a special value of -17
1730(OOM_DISABLE) to disable oom killing entirely for that task.  Its value is
1731scaled linearly with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj.
1732
1733The value of /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj may be reduced no lower than the last
1734value set by a CAP_SYS_RESOURCE process. To reduce the value any lower
1735requires CAP_SYS_RESOURCE.
1736
1737
17383.2 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
1739-------------------------------------------------------------
1740
1741This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer for
1742any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj to tune which
1743process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.
1744
1745Please note that the exported value includes oom_score_adj so it is
1746effectively in range [0,2000].
1747
1748
17493.3  /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
1750-------------------------------------------------------
1751
1752This file contains IO statistics for each running process.
1753
1754Example
1755~~~~~~~
1756
1757::
1758
1759    test:/tmp # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.dat &
1760    [1] 3828
1761
1762    test:/tmp # cat /proc/3828/io
1763    rchar: 323934931
1764    wchar: 323929600
1765    syscr: 632687
1766    syscw: 632675
1767    read_bytes: 0
1768    write_bytes: 323932160
1769    cancelled_write_bytes: 0
1770
1771
1772Description
1773~~~~~~~~~~~
1774
1775rchar
1776^^^^^
1777
1778I/O counter: chars read
1779The number of bytes which this task has caused to be read from storage. This
1780is simply the sum of bytes which this process passed to read() and pread().
1781It includes things like tty IO and it is unaffected by whether or not actual
1782physical disk IO was required (the read might have been satisfied from
1783pagecache).
1784
1785
1786wchar
1787^^^^^
1788
1789I/O counter: chars written
1790The number of bytes which this task has caused, or shall cause to be written
1791to disk. Similar caveats apply here as with rchar.
1792
1793
1794syscr
1795^^^^^
1796
1797I/O counter: read syscalls
1798Attempt to count the number of read I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like read()
1799and pread().
1800
1801
1802syscw
1803^^^^^
1804
1805I/O counter: write syscalls
1806Attempt to count the number of write I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like
1807write() and pwrite().
1808
1809
1810read_bytes
1811^^^^^^^^^^
1812
1813I/O counter: bytes read
1814Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process really did cause to
1815be fetched from the storage layer. Done at the submit_bio() level, so it is
1816accurate for block-backed filesystems. <please add status regarding NFS and
1817CIFS at a later time>
1818
1819
1820write_bytes
1821^^^^^^^^^^^
1822
1823I/O counter: bytes written
1824Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process caused to be sent to
1825the storage layer. This is done at page-dirtying time.
1826
1827
1828cancelled_write_bytes
1829^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1830
1831The big inaccuracy here is truncate. If a process writes 1MB to a file and
1832then deletes the file, it will in fact perform no writeout. But it will have
1833been accounted as having caused 1MB of write.
1834In other words: The number of bytes which this process caused to not happen,
1835by truncating pagecache. A task can cause "negative" IO too. If this task
1836truncates some dirty pagecache, some IO which another task has been accounted
1837for (in its write_bytes) will not be happening. We _could_ just subtract that
1838from the truncating task's write_bytes, but there is information loss in doing
1839that.
1840
1841
1842.. Note::
1843
1844   At its current implementation state, this is a bit racy on 32-bit machines:
1845   if process A reads process B's /proc/pid/io while process B is updating one
1846   of those 64-bit counters, process A could see an intermediate result.
1847
1848
1849More information about this can be found within the taskstats documentation in
1850Documentation/accounting.
1851
18523.4 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
1853---------------------------------------------------------------
1854When a process is dumped, all anonymous memory is written to a core file as
1855long as the size of the core file isn't limited. But sometimes we don't want
1856to dump some memory segments, for example, huge shared memory or DAX.
1857Conversely, sometimes we want to save file-backed memory segments into a core
1858file, not only the individual files.
1859
1860/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter allows you to customize which memory segments
1861will be dumped when the <pid> process is dumped. coredump_filter is a bitmask
1862of memory types. If a bit of the bitmask is set, memory segments of the
1863corresponding memory type are dumped, otherwise they are not dumped.
1864
1865The following 9 memory types are supported:
1866
1867  - (bit 0) anonymous private memory
1868  - (bit 1) anonymous shared memory
1869  - (bit 2) file-backed private memory
1870  - (bit 3) file-backed shared memory
1871  - (bit 4) ELF header pages in file-backed private memory areas (it is
1872    effective only if the bit 2 is cleared)
1873  - (bit 5) hugetlb private memory
1874  - (bit 6) hugetlb shared memory
1875  - (bit 7) DAX private memory
1876  - (bit 8) DAX shared memory
1877
1878  Note that MMIO pages such as frame buffer are never dumped and vDSO pages
1879  are always dumped regardless of the bitmask status.
1880
1881  Note that bits 0-4 don't affect hugetlb or DAX memory. hugetlb memory is
1882  only affected by bit 5-6, and DAX is only affected by bits 7-8.
1883
1884The default value of coredump_filter is 0x33; this means all anonymous memory
1885segments, ELF header pages and hugetlb private memory are dumped.
1886
1887If you don't want to dump all shared memory segments attached to pid 1234,
1888write 0x31 to the process's proc file::
1889
1890  $ echo 0x31 > /proc/1234/coredump_filter
1891
1892When a new process is created, the process inherits the bitmask status from its
1893parent. It is useful to set up coredump_filter before the program runs.
1894For example::
1895
1896  $ echo 0x7 > /proc/self/coredump_filter
1897  $ ./some_program
1898
18993.5	/proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
1900--------------------------------------------------------
1901
1902This file contains lines of the form::
1903
1904    36 35 98:0 /mnt1 /mnt2 rw,noatime master:1 - ext3 /dev/root rw,errors=continue
1905    (1)(2)(3)   (4)   (5)      (6)     (n…m) (m+1)(m+2) (m+3)         (m+4)
1906
1907    (1)   mount ID:        unique identifier of the mount (may be reused after umount)
1908    (2)   parent ID:       ID of parent (or of self for the top of the mount tree)
1909    (3)   major:minor:     value of st_dev for files on filesystem
1910    (4)   root:            root of the mount within the filesystem
1911    (5)   mount point:     mount point relative to the process's root
1912    (6)   mount options:   per mount options
1913    (n…m) optional fields: zero or more fields of the form "tag[:value]"
1914    (m+1) separator:       marks the end of the optional fields
1915    (m+2) filesystem type: name of filesystem of the form "type[.subtype]"
1916    (m+3) mount source:    filesystem specific information or "none"
1917    (m+4) super options:   per super block options
1918
1919Parsers should ignore all unrecognised optional fields.  Currently the
1920possible optional fields are:
1921
1922================  ==============================================================
1923shared:X          mount is shared in peer group X
1924master:X          mount is slave to peer group X
1925propagate_from:X  mount is slave and receives propagation from peer group X [#]_
1926unbindable        mount is unbindable
1927================  ==============================================================
1928
1929.. [#] X is the closest dominant peer group under the process's root.  If
1930       X is the immediate master of the mount, or if there's no dominant peer
1931       group under the same root, then only the "master:X" field is present
1932       and not the "propagate_from:X" field.
1933
1934For more information on mount propagation see:
1935
1936  Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.rst
1937
1938
19393.6	/proc/<pid>/comm  & /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/comm
1940--------------------------------------------------------
1941These files provide a method to access a task's comm value. It also allows for
1942a task to set its own or one of its thread siblings comm value. The comm value
1943is limited in size compared to the cmdline value, so writing anything longer
1944then the kernel's TASK_COMM_LEN (currently 16 chars, including the NUL
1945terminator) will result in a truncated comm value.
1946
1947
19483.7	/proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/children - Information about task children
1949-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1950This file provides a fast way to retrieve first level children pids
1951of a task pointed by <pid>/<tid> pair. The format is a space separated
1952stream of pids.
1953
1954Note the "first level" here -- if a child has its own children they will
1955not be listed here; one needs to read /proc/<children-pid>/task/<tid>/children
1956to obtain the descendants.
1957
1958Since this interface is intended to be fast and cheap it doesn't
1959guarantee to provide precise results and some children might be
1960skipped, especially if they've exited right after we printed their
1961pids, so one needs to either stop or freeze processes being inspected
1962if precise results are needed.
1963
1964
19653.8	/proc/<pid>/fdinfo/<fd> - Information about opened file
1966---------------------------------------------------------------
1967This file provides information associated with an opened file. The regular
1968files have at least four fields -- 'pos', 'flags', 'mnt_id' and 'ino'.
1969The 'pos' represents the current offset of the opened file in decimal
1970form [see lseek(2) for details], 'flags' denotes the octal O_xxx mask the
1971file has been created with [see open(2) for details] and 'mnt_id' represents
1972mount ID of the file system containing the opened file [see 3.5
1973/proc/<pid>/mountinfo for details]. 'ino' represents the inode number of
1974the file.
1975
1976A typical output is::
1977
1978	pos:	0
1979	flags:	0100002
1980	mnt_id:	19
1981	ino:	63107
1982
1983All locks associated with a file descriptor are shown in its fdinfo too::
1984
1985    lock:       1: FLOCK  ADVISORY  WRITE 359 00:13:11691 0 EOF
1986
1987The files such as eventfd, fsnotify, signalfd, epoll among the regular pos/flags
1988pair provide additional information particular to the objects they represent.
1989
1990Eventfd files
1991~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1992
1993::
1994
1995	pos:	0
1996	flags:	04002
1997	mnt_id:	9
1998	ino:	63107
1999	eventfd-count:	5a
2000
2001where 'eventfd-count' is hex value of a counter.
2002
2003Signalfd files
2004~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2005
2006::
2007
2008	pos:	0
2009	flags:	04002
2010	mnt_id:	9
2011	ino:	63107
2012	sigmask:	0000000000000200
2013
2014where 'sigmask' is hex value of the signal mask associated
2015with a file.
2016
2017Epoll files
2018~~~~~~~~~~~
2019
2020::
2021
2022	pos:	0
2023	flags:	02
2024	mnt_id:	9
2025	ino:	63107
2026	tfd:        5 events:       1d data: ffffffffffffffff pos:0 ino:61af sdev:7
2027
2028where 'tfd' is a target file descriptor number in decimal form,
2029'events' is events mask being watched and the 'data' is data
2030associated with a target [see epoll(7) for more details].
2031
2032The 'pos' is current offset of the target file in decimal form
2033[see lseek(2)], 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device numbers
2034where target file resides, all in hex format.
2035
2036Fsnotify files
2037~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2038For inotify files the format is the following::
2039
2040	pos:	0
2041	flags:	02000000
2042	mnt_id:	9
2043	ino:	63107
2044	inotify wd:3 ino:9e7e sdev:800013 mask:800afce ignored_mask:0 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:7e9e0000640d1b6d
2045
2046where 'wd' is a watch descriptor in decimal form, i.e. a target file
2047descriptor number, 'ino' and 'sdev' are inode and device where the
2048target file resides and the 'mask' is the mask of events, all in hex
2049form [see inotify(7) for more details].
2050
2051If the kernel was built with exportfs support, the path to the target
2052file is encoded as a file handle.  The file handle is provided by three
2053fields 'fhandle-bytes', 'fhandle-type' and 'f_handle', all in hex
2054format.
2055
2056If the kernel is built without exportfs support the file handle won't be
2057printed out.
2058
2059If there is no inotify mark attached yet the 'inotify' line will be omitted.
2060
2061For fanotify files the format is::
2062
2063	pos:	0
2064	flags:	02
2065	mnt_id:	9
2066	ino:	63107
2067	fanotify flags:10 event-flags:0
2068	fanotify mnt_id:12 mflags:40 mask:38 ignored_mask:40000003
2069	fanotify ino:4f969 sdev:800013 mflags:0 mask:3b ignored_mask:40000000 fhandle-bytes:8 fhandle-type:1 f_handle:69f90400c275b5b4
2070
2071where fanotify 'flags' and 'event-flags' are values used in fanotify_init
2072call, 'mnt_id' is the mount point identifier, 'mflags' is the value of
2073flags associated with mark which are tracked separately from events
2074mask. 'ino' and 'sdev' are target inode and device, 'mask' is the events
2075mask and 'ignored_mask' is the mask of events which are to be ignored.
2076All are in hex format. Incorporation of 'mflags', 'mask' and 'ignored_mask'
2077provide information about flags and mask used in fanotify_mark
2078call [see fsnotify manpage for details].
2079
2080While the first three lines are mandatory and always printed, the rest is
2081optional and may be omitted if no marks created yet.
2082
2083Timerfd files
2084~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2085
2086::
2087
2088	pos:	0
2089	flags:	02
2090	mnt_id:	9
2091	ino:	63107
2092	clockid: 0
2093	ticks: 0
2094	settime flags: 01
2095	it_value: (0, 49406829)
2096	it_interval: (1, 0)
2097
2098where 'clockid' is the clock type and 'ticks' is the number of the timer expirations
2099that have occurred [see timerfd_create(2) for details]. 'settime flags' are
2100flags in octal form been used to setup the timer [see timerfd_settime(2) for
2101details]. 'it_value' is remaining time until the timer expiration.
2102'it_interval' is the interval for the timer. Note the timer might be set up
2103with TIMER_ABSTIME option which will be shown in 'settime flags', but 'it_value'
2104still exhibits timer's remaining time.
2105
2106DMA Buffer files
2107~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2108
2109::
2110
2111	pos:	0
2112	flags:	04002
2113	mnt_id:	9
2114	ino:	63107
2115	size:   32768
2116	count:  2
2117	exp_name:  system-heap
2118
2119where 'size' is the size of the DMA buffer in bytes. 'count' is the file count of
2120the DMA buffer file. 'exp_name' is the name of the DMA buffer exporter.
2121
21223.9	/proc/<pid>/map_files - Information about memory mapped files
2123---------------------------------------------------------------------
2124This directory contains symbolic links which represent memory mapped files
2125the process is maintaining.  Example output::
2126
2127     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c600000-333c620000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2128     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c81f000-333c820000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2129     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 333c820000-333c821000 -> /usr/lib64/ld-2.18.so
2130     | ...
2131     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 35d0421000-35d0422000 -> /usr/lib64/libselinux.so.1
2132     | lr-------- 1 root root 64 Jan 27 11:24 400000-41a000 -> /usr/bin/ls
2133
2134The name of a link represents the virtual memory bounds of a mapping, i.e.
2135vm_area_struct::vm_start-vm_area_struct::vm_end.
2136
2137The main purpose of the map_files is to retrieve a set of memory mapped
2138files in a fast way instead of parsing /proc/<pid>/maps or
2139/proc/<pid>/smaps, both of which contain many more records.  At the same
2140time one can open(2) mappings from the listings of two processes and
2141comparing their inode numbers to figure out which anonymous memory areas
2142are actually shared.
2143
21443.10	/proc/<pid>/timerslack_ns - Task timerslack value
2145---------------------------------------------------------
2146This file provides the value of the task's timerslack value in nanoseconds.
2147This value specifies an amount of time that normal timers may be deferred
2148in order to coalesce timers and avoid unnecessary wakeups.
2149
2150This allows a task's interactivity vs power consumption tradeoff to be
2151adjusted.
2152
2153Writing 0 to the file will set the task's timerslack to the default value.
2154
2155Valid values are from 0 - ULLONG_MAX
2156
2157An application setting the value must have PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_FSCREDS level
2158permissions on the task specified to change its timerslack_ns value.
2159
21603.11	/proc/<pid>/patch_state - Livepatch patch operation state
2161-----------------------------------------------------------------
2162When CONFIG_LIVEPATCH is enabled, this file displays the value of the
2163patch state for the task.
2164
2165A value of '-1' indicates that no patch is in transition.
2166
2167A value of '0' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is
2168unpatched.  If the patch is being enabled, then the task hasn't been
2169patched yet.  If the patch is being disabled, then the task has already
2170been unpatched.
2171
2172A value of '1' indicates that a patch is in transition and the task is
2173patched.  If the patch is being enabled, then the task has already been
2174patched.  If the patch is being disabled, then the task hasn't been
2175unpatched yet.
2176
21773.12 /proc/<pid>/arch_status - task architecture specific status
2178-------------------------------------------------------------------
2179When CONFIG_PROC_PID_ARCH_STATUS is enabled, this file displays the
2180architecture specific status of the task.
2181
2182Example
2183~~~~~~~
2184
2185::
2186
2187 $ cat /proc/6753/arch_status
2188 AVX512_elapsed_ms:      8
2189
2190Description
2191~~~~~~~~~~~
2192
2193x86 specific entries
2194~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2195
2196AVX512_elapsed_ms
2197^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2198
2199  If AVX512 is supported on the machine, this entry shows the milliseconds
2200  elapsed since the last time AVX512 usage was recorded. The recording
2201  happens on a best effort basis when a task is scheduled out. This means
2202  that the value depends on two factors:
2203
2204    1) The time which the task spent on the CPU without being scheduled
2205       out. With CPU isolation and a single runnable task this can take
2206       several seconds.
2207
2208    2) The time since the task was scheduled out last. Depending on the
2209       reason for being scheduled out (time slice exhausted, syscall ...)
2210       this can be arbitrary long time.
2211
2212  As a consequence the value cannot be considered precise and authoritative
2213  information. The application which uses this information has to be aware
2214  of the overall scenario on the system in order to determine whether a
2215  task is a real AVX512 user or not. Precise information can be obtained
2216  with performance counters.
2217
2218  A special value of '-1' indicates that no AVX512 usage was recorded, thus
2219  the task is unlikely an AVX512 user, but depends on the workload and the
2220  scheduling scenario, it also could be a false negative mentioned above.
2221
22223.13 /proc/<pid>/fd - List of symlinks to open files
2223-------------------------------------------------------
2224This directory contains symbolic links which represent open files
2225the process is maintaining.  Example output::
2226
2227  lr-x------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 0 -> /dev/null
2228  l-wx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 1 -> /dev/null
2229  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 10 -> 'socket:[12539]'
2230  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 11 -> 'socket:[12540]'
2231  lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Sep 20 17:53 12 -> 'socket:[12542]'
2232
2233The number of open files for the process is stored in 'size' member
2234of stat() output for /proc/<pid>/fd for fast access.
2235-------------------------------------------------------
2236
22373.14 /proc/<pid/ksm_stat - Information about the process's ksm status
2238---------------------------------------------------------------------
2239When CONFIG_KSM is enabled, each process has this file which displays
2240the information of ksm merging status.
2241
2242Example
2243~~~~~~~
2244
2245::
2246
2247    / # cat /proc/self/ksm_stat
2248    ksm_rmap_items 0
2249    ksm_zero_pages 0
2250    ksm_merging_pages 0
2251    ksm_process_profit 0
2252    ksm_merge_any: no
2253    ksm_mergeable: no
2254
2255Description
2256~~~~~~~~~~~
2257
2258ksm_rmap_items
2259^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2260
2261The number of ksm_rmap_item structures in use.  The structure
2262ksm_rmap_item stores the reverse mapping information for virtual
2263addresses.  KSM will generate a ksm_rmap_item for each ksm-scanned page of
2264the process.
2265
2266ksm_zero_pages
2267^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2268
2269When /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/use_zero_pages is enabled, it represent how many
2270empty pages are merged with kernel zero pages by KSM.
2271
2272ksm_merging_pages
2273^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2274
2275It represents how many pages of this process are involved in KSM merging
2276(not including ksm_zero_pages). It is the same with what
2277/proc/<pid>/ksm_merging_pages shows.
2278
2279ksm_process_profit
2280^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2281
2282The profit that KSM brings (Saved bytes). KSM can save memory by merging
2283identical pages, but also can consume additional memory, because it needs
2284to generate a number of rmap_items to save each scanned page's brief rmap
2285information. Some of these pages may be merged, but some may not be abled
2286to be merged after being checked several times, which are unprofitable
2287memory consumed.
2288
2289ksm_merge_any
2290^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2291
2292It specifies whether the process's 'mm is added by prctl() into the
2293candidate list of KSM or not, and if KSM scanning is fully enabled at
2294process level.
2295
2296ksm_mergeable
2297^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2298
2299It specifies whether any VMAs of the process''s mms are currently
2300applicable to KSM.
2301
2302More information about KSM can be found in
2303Documentation/admin-guide/mm/ksm.rst.
2304
2305
2306Chapter 4: Configuring procfs
2307=============================
2308
23094.1	Mount options
2310---------------------
2311
2312The following mount options are supported:
2313
2314	=========	========================================================
2315	hidepid=	Set /proc/<pid>/ access mode.
2316	gid=		Set the group authorized to learn processes information.
2317	subset=		Show only the specified subset of procfs.
2318	=========	========================================================
2319
2320hidepid=off or hidepid=0 means classic mode - everybody may access all
2321/proc/<pid>/ directories (default).
2322
2323hidepid=noaccess or hidepid=1 means users may not access any /proc/<pid>/
2324directories but their own.  Sensitive files like cmdline, sched*, status are now
2325protected against other users.  This makes it impossible to learn whether any
2326user runs specific program (given the program doesn't reveal itself by its
2327behaviour).  As an additional bonus, as /proc/<pid>/cmdline is unaccessible for
2328other users, poorly written programs passing sensitive information via program
2329arguments are now protected against local eavesdroppers.
2330
2331hidepid=invisible or hidepid=2 means hidepid=1 plus all /proc/<pid>/ will be
2332fully invisible to other users.  It doesn't mean that it hides a fact whether a
2333process with a specific pid value exists (it can be learned by other means, e.g.
2334by "kill -0 $PID"), but it hides process's uid and gid, which may be learned by
2335stat()'ing /proc/<pid>/ otherwise.  It greatly complicates an intruder's task of
2336gathering information about running processes, whether some daemon runs with
2337elevated privileges, whether other user runs some sensitive program, whether
2338other users run any program at all, etc.
2339
2340hidepid=ptraceable or hidepid=4 means that procfs should only contain
2341/proc/<pid>/ directories that the caller can ptrace.
2342
2343gid= defines a group authorized to learn processes information otherwise
2344prohibited by hidepid=.  If you use some daemon like identd which needs to learn
2345information about processes information, just add identd to this group.
2346
2347subset=pid hides all top level files and directories in the procfs that
2348are not related to tasks.
2349
2350Chapter 5: Filesystem behavior
2351==============================
2352
2353Originally, before the advent of pid namespace, procfs was a global file
2354system. It means that there was only one procfs instance in the system.
2355
2356When pid namespace was added, a separate procfs instance was mounted in
2357each pid namespace. So, procfs mount options are global among all
2358mountpoints within the same namespace::
2359
2360	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2361	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2362
2363	# strace -e mount mount -o hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2364	mount("proc", "/tmp/proc", "proc", 0, "hidepid=1") = 0
2365	+++ exited with 0 +++
2366
2367	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2368	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2369	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=2 0 0
2370
2371and only after remounting procfs mount options will change at all
2372mountpoints::
2373
2374	# mount -o remount,hidepid=1 -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2375
2376	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2377	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
2378	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=1 0 0
2379
2380This behavior is different from the behavior of other filesystems.
2381
2382The new procfs behavior is more like other filesystems. Each procfs mount
2383creates a new procfs instance. Mount options affect own procfs instance.
2384It means that it became possible to have several procfs instances
2385displaying tasks with different filtering options in one pid namespace::
2386
2387	# mount -o hidepid=invisible -t proc proc /proc
2388	# mount -o hidepid=noaccess -t proc proc /tmp/proc
2389	# grep ^proc /proc/mounts
2390	proc /proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=invisible 0 0
2391	proc /tmp/proc proc rw,relatime,hidepid=noaccess 0 0
2392