procfs

Procfs (English for process file system) is a virtual file system on most Unix-like systems. It is used to display and change of system and process information. It is usually included in the directory structure under / proc. It is dynamically generated by the kernel during the boot process and are not stored.

History

The first / proc was introduced by Tom J. Killian in the eighth version of Unix. Today's procfs has its origin in the operating system Plan 9, where it has been adopted as one of the few concepts to other operating systems. It follows the Unix philosophy " everything is a file ", since all information is available in virtual files.

Linux

Processes

Under Linux, each process gets a directory on the format / proc / PID. In that various virtual files are included that provide information about the process.

System Information

Procfs provides a lot of information about various parts of your computer are available. Since kernel 2.6, many parts are moved in the sysfs virtual file system also.

For example, the file / proc / cpuinfo contains detailed information about the processor.