proc: remove '##' usage
[GitHub/mt8127/android_kernel_alcatel_ttab.git] / Documentation / filesystems / proc.txt
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1------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 T H E /proc F I L E S Y S T E M
3------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/proc/sys Terrehon Bowden <terrehon@pacbell.net> October 7 1999
5 Bodo Bauer <bb@ricochet.net>
6
72.4.x update Jorge Nerin <comandante@zaralinux.com> November 14 2000
8------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9Version 1.3 Kernel version 2.2.12
10 Kernel version 2.4.0-test11-pre4
11------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12
13Table of Contents
14-----------------
15
16 0 Preface
17 0.1 Introduction/Credits
18 0.2 Legal Stuff
19
20 1 Collecting System Information
21 1.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
22 1.2 Kernel data
23 1.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
24 1.4 Networking info in /proc/net
25 1.5 SCSI info
26 1.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
27 1.7 TTY info in /proc/tty
28 1.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
29
30 2 Modifying System Parameters
31 2.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data
32 2.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
33 2.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
34 2.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem
35 2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
36 2.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
37 2.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
38 2.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
39 2.9 Appletalk
40 2.10 IPX
41 2.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
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42 2.12 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score
43 2.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
f9c99463 44 2.14 /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
bb90110d 45 2.15 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
2d4d4864 46 2.16 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
7ef9964e 47 2.17 /proc/sys/fs/epoll - Configuration options for the epoll interface
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48
49------------------------------------------------------------------------------
50Preface
51------------------------------------------------------------------------------
52
530.1 Introduction/Credits
54------------------------
55
56This documentation is part of a soon (or so we hope) to be released book on
57the SuSE Linux distribution. As there is no complete documentation for the
58/proc file system and we've used many freely available sources to write these
59chapters, it seems only fair to give the work back to the Linux community.
60This work is based on the 2.2.* kernel version and the upcoming 2.4.*. I'm
61afraid it's still far from complete, but we hope it will be useful. As far as
62we know, it is the first 'all-in-one' document about the /proc file system. It
63is focused on the Intel x86 hardware, so if you are looking for PPC, ARM,
64SPARC, AXP, etc., features, you probably won't find what you are looking for.
65It also only covers IPv4 networking, not IPv6 nor other protocols - sorry. But
66additions and patches are welcome and will be added to this document if you
67mail them to Bodo.
68
69We'd like to thank Alan Cox, Rik van Riel, and Alexey Kuznetsov and a lot of
70other people for help compiling this documentation. We'd also like to extend a
71special thank you to Andi Kleen for documentation, which we relied on heavily
72to create this document, as well as the additional information he provided.
73Thanks to everybody else who contributed source or docs to the Linux kernel
74and helped create a great piece of software... :)
75
76If you have any comments, corrections or additions, please don't hesitate to
77contact Bodo Bauer at bb@ricochet.net. We'll be happy to add them to this
78document.
79
80The latest version of this document is available online at
81http://skaro.nightcrawler.com/~bb/Docs/Proc as HTML version.
82
83If the above direction does not works for you, ypu could try the kernel
84mailing list at linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org and/or try to reach me at
85comandante@zaralinux.com.
86
870.2 Legal Stuff
88---------------
89
90We don't guarantee the correctness of this document, and if you come to us
91complaining about how you screwed up your system because of incorrect
92documentation, we won't feel responsible...
93
94------------------------------------------------------------------------------
95CHAPTER 1: COLLECTING SYSTEM INFORMATION
96------------------------------------------------------------------------------
97
98------------------------------------------------------------------------------
99In This Chapter
100------------------------------------------------------------------------------
101* Investigating the properties of the pseudo file system /proc and its
102 ability to provide information on the running Linux system
103* Examining /proc's structure
104* Uncovering various information about the kernel and the processes running
105 on the system
106------------------------------------------------------------------------------
107
108
109The proc file system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the
110kernel. It can be used to obtain information about the system and to change
111certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).
112
113First, we'll take a look at the read-only parts of /proc. In Chapter 2, we
114show you how you can use /proc/sys to change settings.
115
1161.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
117-----------------------------------
118
119The directory /proc contains (among other things) one subdirectory for each
120process running on the system, which is named after the process ID (PID).
121
122The link self points to the process reading the file system. Each process
123subdirectory has the entries listed in Table 1-1.
124
125
126Table 1-1: Process specific entries in /proc
127..............................................................................
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128 File Content
129 clear_refs Clears page referenced bits shown in smaps output
130 cmdline Command line arguments
131 cpu Current and last cpu in which it was executed (2.4)(smp)
132 cwd Link to the current working directory
133 environ Values of environment variables
134 exe Link to the executable of this process
135 fd Directory, which contains all file descriptors
136 maps Memory maps to executables and library files (2.4)
137 mem Memory held by this process
138 root Link to the root directory of this process
139 stat Process status
140 statm Process memory status information
141 status Process status in human readable form
142 wchan If CONFIG_KALLSYMS is set, a pre-decoded wchan
143 smaps Extension based on maps, the rss size for each mapped file
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144..............................................................................
145
146For example, to get the status information of a process, all you have to do is
147read the file /proc/PID/status:
148
149 >cat /proc/self/status
150 Name: cat
151 State: R (running)
152 Pid: 5452
153 PPid: 743
154 TracerPid: 0 (2.4)
155 Uid: 501 501 501 501
156 Gid: 100 100 100 100
157 Groups: 100 14 16
158 VmSize: 1112 kB
159 VmLck: 0 kB
160 VmRSS: 348 kB
161 VmData: 24 kB
162 VmStk: 12 kB
163 VmExe: 8 kB
164 VmLib: 1044 kB
165 SigPnd: 0000000000000000
166 SigBlk: 0000000000000000
167 SigIgn: 0000000000000000
168 SigCgt: 0000000000000000
169 CapInh: 00000000fffffeff
170 CapPrm: 0000000000000000
171 CapEff: 0000000000000000
172
173
174This shows you nearly the same information you would get if you viewed it with
175the ps command. In fact, ps uses the proc file system to obtain its
176information. The statm file contains more detailed information about the
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177process memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-2. The stat
178file contains details information about the process itself. Its fields are
179explained in Table 1-3.
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180
181
182Table 1-2: Contents of the statm files (as of 2.6.8-rc3)
183..............................................................................
184 Field Content
185 size total program size (pages) (same as VmSize in status)
186 resident size of memory portions (pages) (same as VmRSS in status)
187 shared number of pages that are shared (i.e. backed by a file)
188 trs number of pages that are 'code' (not including libs; broken,
189 includes data segment)
190 lrs number of pages of library (always 0 on 2.6)
191 drs number of pages of data/stack (including libs; broken,
192 includes library text)
193 dt number of dirty pages (always 0 on 2.6)
194..............................................................................
195
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196
197Table 1-3: Contents of the stat files (as of 2.6.22-rc3)
198..............................................................................
199 Field Content
200 pid process id
201 tcomm filename of the executable
202 state state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an
203 uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped)
204 ppid process id of the parent process
205 pgrp pgrp of the process
206 sid session id
207 tty_nr tty the process uses
208 tty_pgrp pgrp of the tty
209 flags task flags
210 min_flt number of minor faults
211 cmin_flt number of minor faults with child's
212 maj_flt number of major faults
213 cmaj_flt number of major faults with child's
214 utime user mode jiffies
215 stime kernel mode jiffies
216 cutime user mode jiffies with child's
217 cstime kernel mode jiffies with child's
218 priority priority level
219 nice nice level
220 num_threads number of threads
2e01e00e 221 it_real_value (obsolete, always 0)
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222 start_time time the process started after system boot
223 vsize virtual memory size
224 rss resident set memory size
225 rsslim current limit in bytes on the rss
226 start_code address above which program text can run
227 end_code address below which program text can run
228 start_stack address of the start of the stack
229 esp current value of ESP
230 eip current value of EIP
231 pending bitmap of pending signals (obsolete)
232 blocked bitmap of blocked signals (obsolete)
233 sigign bitmap of ignored signals (obsolete)
234 sigcatch bitmap of catched signals (obsolete)
235 wchan address where process went to sleep
236 0 (place holder)
237 0 (place holder)
238 exit_signal signal to send to parent thread on exit
239 task_cpu which CPU the task is scheduled on
240 rt_priority realtime priority
241 policy scheduling policy (man sched_setscheduler)
242 blkio_ticks time spent waiting for block IO
243..............................................................................
244
245
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2461.2 Kernel data
247---------------
248
249Similar to the process entries, the kernel data files give information about
250the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in
18d96779 251/proc and are listed in Table 1-4. Not all of these will be present in your
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252system. It depends on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which
253files are there, and which are missing.
254
18d96779 255Table 1-4: Kernel info in /proc
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256..............................................................................
257 File Content
258 apm Advanced power management info
259 buddyinfo Kernel memory allocator information (see text) (2.5)
260 bus Directory containing bus specific information
261 cmdline Kernel command line
262 cpuinfo Info about the CPU
263 devices Available devices (block and character)
264 dma Used DMS channels
265 filesystems Supported filesystems
266 driver Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc (2.4)
267 execdomains Execdomains, related to security (2.4)
268 fb Frame Buffer devices (2.4)
269 fs File system parameters, currently nfs/exports (2.4)
270 ide Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem
271 interrupts Interrupt usage
272 iomem Memory map (2.4)
273 ioports I/O port usage
274 irq Masks for irq to cpu affinity (2.4)(smp?)
275 isapnp ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info (2.4)
276 kcore Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4))
277 kmsg Kernel messages
278 ksyms Kernel symbol table
279 loadavg Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes
280 locks Kernel locks
281 meminfo Memory info
282 misc Miscellaneous
283 modules List of loaded modules
284 mounts Mounted filesystems
285 net Networking info (see text)
286 partitions Table of partitions known to the system
8b60756a 287 pci Deprecated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/,
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288 decoupled by lspci (2.4)
289 rtc Real time clock
290 scsi SCSI info (see text)
291 slabinfo Slab pool info
292 stat Overall statistics
293 swaps Swap space utilization
294 sys See chapter 2
295 sysvipc Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm) (2.4)
296 tty Info of tty drivers
297 uptime System uptime
298 version Kernel version
299 video bttv info of video resources (2.4)
a47a126a 300 vmallocinfo Show vmalloced areas
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301..............................................................................
302
303You can, for example, check which interrupts are currently in use and what
304they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts:
305
306 > cat /proc/interrupts
307 CPU0
308 0: 8728810 XT-PIC timer
309 1: 895 XT-PIC keyboard
310 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
311 3: 531695 XT-PIC aha152x
312 4: 2014133 XT-PIC serial
313 5: 44401 XT-PIC pcnet_cs
314 8: 2 XT-PIC rtc
315 11: 8 XT-PIC i82365
316 12: 182918 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
317 13: 1 XT-PIC fpu
318 14: 1232265 XT-PIC ide0
319 15: 7 XT-PIC ide1
320 NMI: 0
321
322In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the
323output of a SMP machine):
324
325 > cat /proc/interrupts
326
327 CPU0 CPU1
328 0: 1243498 1214548 IO-APIC-edge timer
329 1: 8949 8958 IO-APIC-edge keyboard
330 2: 0 0 XT-PIC cascade
331 5: 11286 10161 IO-APIC-edge soundblaster
332 8: 1 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc
333 9: 27422 27407 IO-APIC-edge 3c503
334 12: 113645 113873 IO-APIC-edge PS/2 Mouse
335 13: 0 0 XT-PIC fpu
336 14: 22491 24012 IO-APIC-edge ide0
337 15: 2183 2415 IO-APIC-edge ide1
338 17: 30564 30414 IO-APIC-level eth0
339 18: 177 164 IO-APIC-level bttv
340 NMI: 2457961 2457959
341 LOC: 2457882 2457881
342 ERR: 2155
343
344NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI
345(Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.
346
347LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.
348
349ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that
350connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected,
351the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big
352problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.
353
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354In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again. This time the goal was for
355/proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not
356just those considered 'most important'. The new vectors are:
357
358 THR -- interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter
359 (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds
360 a configurable threshold. Only available on some systems.
361
362 TRM -- a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold
363 has been exceeded for the CPU. This interrupt may also be generated
364 when the temperature drops back to normal.
365
366 SPU -- a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered
367 by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC. Hence
368 the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from.
369 For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector
370 of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.
371
372 RES, CAL, TLB -- rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are
373 sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS. Typically,
374 their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to
375 determine the occurance of interrupt of the given type.
376
377The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevent. For example,
378the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms. Others are
379suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor. As of this writing, only
380i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.
381
382Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4.
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383It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity, this means that you can "hook" an
384IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the
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385irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and two files; default_smp_affinity and
386prof_cpu_mask.
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387
388For example
389 > ls /proc/irq/
390 0 10 12 14 16 18 2 4 6 8 prof_cpu_mask
18404756 391 1 11 13 15 17 19 3 5 7 9 default_smp_affinity
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392 > ls /proc/irq/0/
393 smp_affinity
394
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395smp_affinity is a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the
396IRQ, you can set it by doing:
1da177e4 397
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398 > echo 1 > /proc/irq/10/smp_affinity
399
400This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo
4015 which means that only the first and fourth CPU can handle the IRQ.
1da177e4 402
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403The contents of each smp_affinity file is the same by default:
404
405 > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity
406 ffffffff
1da177e4 407
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408The default_smp_affinity mask applies to all non-active IRQs, which are the
409IRQs which have not yet been allocated/activated, and hence which lack a
410/proc/irq/[0-9]* directory.
1da177e4 411
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412prof_cpu_mask specifies which CPUs are to be profiled by the system wide
413profiler. Default value is ffffffff (all cpus).
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414
415The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin
416between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has
417more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the
418best choice for almost everyone.
419
420There are three more important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys.
421The general rule is that the contents, or even the existence of these
422directories, depend on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the
423directory scsi may not exist. The same is true with the net, which is there
424only when networking support is present in the running kernel.
425
426The slabinfo file gives information about memory usage at the slab level.
427Linux uses slab pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2.
428Commonly used objects have their own slab pool (such as network buffers,
429directory cache, and so on).
430
431..............................................................................
432
433> cat /proc/buddyinfo
434
435Node 0, zone DMA 0 4 5 4 4 3 ...
436Node 0, zone Normal 1 0 0 1 101 8 ...
437Node 0, zone HighMem 2 0 0 1 1 0 ...
438
439Memory fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a
440useful tool for helping diagnose these problems. Buddyinfo will give you a
441clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous
442allocation failed.
443
444Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are
445available. In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in
446ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE
447available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc...
448
449..............................................................................
450
451meminfo:
452
453Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory. This
454varies by architecture and compile options. The following is from a
45516GB PIII, which has highmem enabled. You may not have all of these fields.
456
457> cat /proc/meminfo
458
459
460MemTotal: 16344972 kB
461MemFree: 13634064 kB
462Buffers: 3656 kB
463Cached: 1195708 kB
464SwapCached: 0 kB
465Active: 891636 kB
466Inactive: 1077224 kB
467HighTotal: 15597528 kB
468HighFree: 13629632 kB
469LowTotal: 747444 kB
470LowFree: 4432 kB
471SwapTotal: 0 kB
472SwapFree: 0 kB
473Dirty: 968 kB
474Writeback: 0 kB
b88473f7 475AnonPages: 861800 kB
1da177e4 476Mapped: 280372 kB
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477Slab: 284364 kB
478SReclaimable: 159856 kB
479SUnreclaim: 124508 kB
480PageTables: 24448 kB
481NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
482Bounce: 0 kB
483WritebackTmp: 0 kB
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484CommitLimit: 7669796 kB
485Committed_AS: 100056 kB
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486VmallocTotal: 112216 kB
487VmallocUsed: 428 kB
488VmallocChunk: 111088 kB
489
490 MemTotal: Total usable ram (i.e. physical ram minus a few reserved
491 bits and the kernel binary code)
492 MemFree: The sum of LowFree+HighFree
493 Buffers: Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
494 shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
495 Cached: in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
496 pagecache). Doesn't include SwapCached
497 SwapCached: Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but
498 still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it
499 doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already
500 in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
501 Active: Memory that has been used more recently and usually not
502 reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
503 Inactive: Memory which has been less recently used. It is more
504 eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
505 HighTotal:
506 HighFree: Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory
507 Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or
508 for the pagecache. The kernel must use tricks to access
509 this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
510 LowTotal:
511 LowFree: Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that
3f6dee9b 512 highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the
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513 kernel's use for its own data structures. Among many
514 other things, it is where everything from the Slab is
515 allocated. Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
516 SwapTotal: total amount of swap space available
517 SwapFree: Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily
518 on the disk
519 Dirty: Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
520 Writeback: Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
b88473f7 521 AnonPages: Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables
1da177e4 522 Mapped: files which have been mmaped, such as libraries
e82443c0 523 Slab: in-kernel data structures cache
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524SReclaimable: Part of Slab, that might be reclaimed, such as caches
525 SUnreclaim: Part of Slab, that cannot be reclaimed on memory pressure
526 PageTables: amount of memory dedicated to the lowest level of page
527 tables.
528NFS_Unstable: NFS pages sent to the server, but not yet committed to stable
529 storage
530 Bounce: Memory used for block device "bounce buffers"
531WritebackTmp: Memory used by FUSE for temporary writeback buffers
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532 CommitLimit: Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'),
533 this is the total amount of memory currently available to
534 be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to
535 if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in
536 'vm.overcommit_memory').
537 The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula:
538 CommitLimit = ('vm.overcommit_ratio' * Physical RAM) + Swap
539 For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G
540 of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would
541 yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
542 For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation
543 in vm/overcommit-accounting.
544Committed_AS: The amount of memory presently allocated on the system.
545 The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which
546 has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been
547 "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G
548 of memory, but only touches 300M of it will only show up
549 as using 300M of memory even if it has the address space
550 allocated for the entire 1G. This 1G is memory which has
551 been "committed" to by the VM and can be used at any time
552 by the allocating application. With strict overcommit
553 enabled on the system (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'),
554 allocations which would exceed the CommitLimit (detailed
555 above) will not be permitted. This is useful if one needs
556 to guarantee that processes will not fail due to lack of
557 memory once that memory has been successfully allocated.
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558VmallocTotal: total size of vmalloc memory area
559 VmallocUsed: amount of vmalloc area which is used
560VmallocChunk: largest contigious block of vmalloc area which is free
561
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562..............................................................................
563
564vmallocinfo:
565
566Provides information about vmalloced/vmaped areas. One line per area,
567containing the virtual address range of the area, size in bytes,
568caller information of the creator, and optional information depending
569on the kind of area :
570
571 pages=nr number of pages
572 phys=addr if a physical address was specified
573 ioremap I/O mapping (ioremap() and friends)
574 vmalloc vmalloc() area
575 vmap vmap()ed pages
576 user VM_USERMAP area
577 vpages buffer for pages pointers was vmalloced (huge area)
578 N<node>=nr (Only on NUMA kernels)
579 Number of pages allocated on memory node <node>
580
581> cat /proc/vmallocinfo
5820xffffc20000000000-0xffffc20000201000 2101248 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
583 /0x2c0 pages=512 vmalloc N0=128 N1=128 N2=128 N3=128
5840xffffc20000201000-0xffffc20000302000 1052672 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
585 /0x2c0 pages=256 vmalloc N0=64 N1=64 N2=64 N3=64
5860xffffc20000302000-0xffffc20000304000 8192 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
587 phys=7fee8000 ioremap
5880xffffc20000304000-0xffffc20000307000 12288 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
589 phys=7fee7000 ioremap
5900xffffc2000031d000-0xffffc2000031f000 8192 init_vdso_vars+0x112/0x210
5910xffffc2000031f000-0xffffc2000032b000 49152 cramfs_uncompress_init+0x2e ...
592 /0x80 pages=11 vmalloc N0=3 N1=3 N2=2 N3=3
5930xffffc2000033a000-0xffffc2000033d000 12288 sys_swapon+0x640/0xac0 ...
594 pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
5950xffffc20000347000-0xffffc2000034c000 20480 xt_alloc_table_info+0xfe ...
596 /0x130 [x_tables] pages=4 vmalloc N0=4
5970xffffffffa0000000-0xffffffffa000f000 61440 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
598 pages=14 vmalloc N2=14
5990xffffffffa000f000-0xffffffffa0014000 20480 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
600 pages=4 vmalloc N1=4
6010xffffffffa0014000-0xffffffffa0017000 12288 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
602 pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
6030xffffffffa0017000-0xffffffffa0022000 45056 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
604 pages=10 vmalloc N0=10
1da177e4
LT
605
6061.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
607----------------------------
608
609The subdirectory /proc/ide contains information about all IDE devices of which
610the kernel is aware. There is one subdirectory for each IDE controller, the
611file drivers and a link for each IDE device, pointing to the device directory
612in the controller specific subtree.
613
614The file drivers contains general information about the drivers used for the
615IDE devices:
616
617 > cat /proc/ide/drivers
618 ide-cdrom version 4.53
619 ide-disk version 1.08
620
621More detailed information can be found in the controller specific
622subdirectories. These are named ide0, ide1 and so on. Each of these
18d96779 623directories contains the files shown in table 1-5.
1da177e4
LT
624
625
18d96779 626Table 1-5: IDE controller info in /proc/ide/ide?
1da177e4
LT
627..............................................................................
628 File Content
629 channel IDE channel (0 or 1)
630 config Configuration (only for PCI/IDE bridge)
631 mate Mate name
632 model Type/Chipset of IDE controller
633..............................................................................
634
635Each device connected to a controller has a separate subdirectory in the
18d96779 636controllers directory. The files listed in table 1-6 are contained in these
1da177e4
LT
637directories.
638
639
18d96779 640Table 1-6: IDE device information
1da177e4
LT
641..............................................................................
642 File Content
643 cache The cache
644 capacity Capacity of the medium (in 512Byte blocks)
645 driver driver and version
646 geometry physical and logical geometry
647 identify device identify block
648 media media type
649 model device identifier
650 settings device setup
651 smart_thresholds IDE disk management thresholds
652 smart_values IDE disk management values
653..............................................................................
654
655The most interesting file is settings. This file contains a nice overview of
656the drive parameters:
657
658 # cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings
659 name value min max mode
660 ---- ----- --- --- ----
661 bios_cyl 526 0 65535 rw
662 bios_head 255 0 255 rw
663 bios_sect 63 0 63 rw
664 breada_readahead 4 0 127 rw
665 bswap 0 0 1 r
666 file_readahead 72 0 2097151 rw
667 io_32bit 0 0 3 rw
668 keepsettings 0 0 1 rw
669 max_kb_per_request 122 1 127 rw
670 multcount 0 0 8 rw
671 nice1 1 0 1 rw
672 nowerr 0 0 1 rw
673 pio_mode write-only 0 255 w
674 slow 0 0 1 rw
675 unmaskirq 0 0 1 rw
676 using_dma 0 0 1 rw
677
678
6791.4 Networking info in /proc/net
680--------------------------------
681
682The subdirectory /proc/net follows the usual pattern. Table 1-6 shows the
683additional values you get for IP version 6 if you configure the kernel to
684support this. Table 1-7 lists the files and their meaning.
685
686
687Table 1-6: IPv6 info in /proc/net
688..............................................................................
689 File Content
690 udp6 UDP sockets (IPv6)
691 tcp6 TCP sockets (IPv6)
692 raw6 Raw device statistics (IPv6)
693 igmp6 IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6)
694 if_inet6 List of IPv6 interface addresses
695 ipv6_route Kernel routing table for IPv6
696 rt6_stats Global IPv6 routing tables statistics
697 sockstat6 Socket statistics (IPv6)
698 snmp6 Snmp data (IPv6)
699..............................................................................
700
701
702Table 1-7: Network info in /proc/net
703..............................................................................
704 File Content
705 arp Kernel ARP table
706 dev network devices with statistics
707 dev_mcast the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too
708 (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound
709 addresses).
710 dev_stat network device status
711 ip_fwchains Firewall chain linkage
712 ip_fwnames Firewall chain names
713 ip_masq Directory containing the masquerading tables
714 ip_masquerade Major masquerading table
715 netstat Network statistics
716 raw raw device statistics
717 route Kernel routing table
718 rpc Directory containing rpc info
719 rt_cache Routing cache
720 snmp SNMP data
721 sockstat Socket statistics
722 tcp TCP sockets
723 tr_rif Token ring RIF routing table
724 udp UDP sockets
725 unix UNIX domain sockets
726 wireless Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc)
727 igmp IP multicast addresses, which this host joined
728 psched Global packet scheduler parameters.
729 netlink List of PF_NETLINK sockets
730 ip_mr_vifs List of multicast virtual interfaces
731 ip_mr_cache List of multicast routing cache
732..............................................................................
733
734You can use this information to see which network devices are available in
735your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices:
736
737 > cat /proc/net/dev
738 Inter-|Receive |[...
739 face |bytes packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[...
740 lo: 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0 [...
741 ppp0:15475140 20721 410 0 0 410 0 0 [...
742 eth0: 614530 7085 0 0 0 0 0 1 [...
743
744 ...] Transmit
745 ...] bytes packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
746 ...] 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0
747 ...] 1375103 17405 0 0 0 0 0 0
748 ...] 1703981 5535 0 0 0 3 0 0
749
750In addition, each Channel Bond interface has it's own directory. For
751example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/.
752It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the
753current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how
754many times the slaves link has failed.
755
7561.5 SCSI info
757-------------
758
759If you have a SCSI host adapter in your system, you'll find a subdirectory
760named after the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi. You'll also see a list
761of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi:
762
763 >cat /proc/scsi/scsi
764 Attached devices:
765 Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
766 Vendor: IBM Model: DGHS09U Rev: 03E0
767 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
768 Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
769 Vendor: PIONEER Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S Rev: 1.04
770 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
771
772
773The directory named after the driver has one file for each adapter found in
774the system. These files contain information about the controller, including
775the used IRQ and the IO address range. The amount of information shown is
776dependent on the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec
777AHA-2940 SCSI adapter:
778
779 > cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0
780
781 Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4
782 Compile Options:
783 TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled
784 AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS : Disabled
785 AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY : 5
786 Adapter Configuration:
787 SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter
788 Ultra Wide Controller
789 PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000
790 Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used.
791 Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled
792 IRQ: 10
793 SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2,
794 Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255
795 Interrupts: 160328
796 BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6
797 Adapter Control Word: 0x005b
798 Extended Translation: Enabled
799 Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff
800 Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001
801 Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000
802 Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000
803 Default Tag Queue Depth: 8
804 Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0:
805 {255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255}
806 Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0:
807 {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
808 Statistics:
809 (scsi0:0:0:0)
810 Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8
811 Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0)
812 Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes)
813 (scsi0:0:6:0)
814 Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15
815 Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0)
816 Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes)
817
818
8191.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
820---------------------------------------
821
822The directory /proc/parport contains information about the parallel ports of
823your system. It has one subdirectory for each port, named after the port
824number (0,1,2,...).
825
826These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-8.
827
828
829Table 1-8: Files in /proc/parport
830..............................................................................
831 File Content
832 autoprobe Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired.
833 devices list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the
834 name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear
835 against any).
836 hardware Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel.
837 irq IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate
838 file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ
839 number or none).
840..............................................................................
841
8421.7 TTY info in /proc/tty
843-------------------------
844
845Information about the available and actually used tty's can be found in the
846directory /proc/tty.You'll find entries for drivers and line disciplines in
847this directory, as shown in Table 1-9.
848
849
850Table 1-9: Files in /proc/tty
851..............................................................................
852 File Content
853 drivers list of drivers and their usage
854 ldiscs registered line disciplines
855 driver/serial usage statistic and status of single tty lines
856..............................................................................
857
858To see which tty's are currently in use, you can simply look into the file
859/proc/tty/drivers:
860
861 > cat /proc/tty/drivers
862 pty_slave /dev/pts 136 0-255 pty:slave
863 pty_master /dev/ptm 128 0-255 pty:master
864 pty_slave /dev/ttyp 3 0-255 pty:slave
865 pty_master /dev/pty 2 0-255 pty:master
866 serial /dev/cua 5 64-67 serial:callout
867 serial /dev/ttyS 4 64-67 serial
868 /dev/tty0 /dev/tty0 4 0 system:vtmaster
869 /dev/ptmx /dev/ptmx 5 2 system
870 /dev/console /dev/console 5 1 system:console
871 /dev/tty /dev/tty 5 0 system:/dev/tty
872 unknown /dev/tty 4 1-63 console
873
874
8751.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
876-------------------------------------------------
877
878Various pieces of information about kernel activity are available in the
879/proc/stat file. All of the numbers reported in this file are aggregates
880since the system first booted. For a quick look, simply cat the file:
881
882 > cat /proc/stat
b68f2c3a
LC
883 cpu 2255 34 2290 22625563 6290 127 456 0
884 cpu0 1132 34 1441 11311718 3675 127 438 0
885 cpu1 1123 0 849 11313845 2614 0 18 0
1da177e4
LT
886 intr 114930548 113199788 3 0 5 263 0 4 [... lots more numbers ...]
887 ctxt 1990473
888 btime 1062191376
889 processes 2915
890 procs_running 1
891 procs_blocked 0
892
893The very first "cpu" line aggregates the numbers in all of the other "cpuN"
894lines. These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing
895different kinds of work. Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a
896second). The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
897
898- user: normal processes executing in user mode
899- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
900- system: processes executing in kernel mode
901- idle: twiddling thumbs
902- iowait: waiting for I/O to complete
903- irq: servicing interrupts
904- softirq: servicing softirqs
b68f2c3a 905- steal: involuntary wait
1da177e4
LT
906
907The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts serviced since boot time, for each
908of the possible system interrupts. The first column is the total of all
909interrupts serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular
910interrupt.
911
912The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.
913
914The "btime" line gives the time at which the system booted, in seconds since
915the Unix epoch.
916
917The "processes" line gives the number of processes and threads created, which
918includes (but is not limited to) those created by calls to the fork() and
919clone() system calls.
920
921The "procs_running" line gives the number of processes currently running on
922CPUs.
923
924The "procs_blocked" line gives the number of processes currently blocked,
925waiting for I/O to complete.
926
37515fac 927
c9de560d
AT
9281.9 Ext4 file system parameters
929------------------------------
37515fac
TT
930
931Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in
932/proc/fs/ext4. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
933/proc/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /proc/fs/ext4/hdc or
934/proc/fs/ext4/dm-0). The files in each per-device directory are shown
935in Table 1-10, below.
936
937Table 1-10: Files in /proc/fs/ext4/<devname>
938..............................................................................
939 File Content
940 mb_groups details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks
941 mb_history multiblock allocation history
942 stats controls whether the multiblock allocator should start
943 collecting statistics, which are shown during the unmount
944 group_prealloc the multiblock allocator will round up allocation
945 requests to a multiple of this tuning parameter if the
946 stripe size is not set in the ext4 superblock
947 max_to_scan The maximum number of extents the multiblock allocator
948 will search to find the best extent
949 min_to_scan The minimum number of extents the multiblock allocator
950 will search to find the best extent
951 order2_req Tuning parameter which controls the minimum size for
952 requests (as a power of 2) where the buddy cache is
953 used
954 stream_req Files which have fewer blocks than this tunable
955 parameter will have their blocks allocated out of a
956 block group specific preallocation pool, so that small
957 files are packed closely together. Each large file
958 will have its blocks allocated out of its own unique
959 preallocation pool.
240799cd
TT
960inode_readahead Tuning parameter which controls the maximum number of
961 inode table blocks that ext4's inode table readahead
962 algorithm will pre-read into the buffer cache
37515fac
TT
963..............................................................................
964
1da177e4
LT
965
966------------------------------------------------------------------------------
967Summary
968------------------------------------------------------------------------------
969The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only
970allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status
971by reading files in the hierarchy.
972
973The directory structure of /proc reflects the types of information and makes
974it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data.
975------------------------------------------------------------------------------
976
977------------------------------------------------------------------------------
978CHAPTER 2: MODIFYING SYSTEM PARAMETERS
979------------------------------------------------------------------------------
980
981------------------------------------------------------------------------------
982In This Chapter
983------------------------------------------------------------------------------
984* Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys
985* Exploring the files which modify certain parameters
986* Review of the /proc/sys file tree
987------------------------------------------------------------------------------
988
989
990A very interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only
991a source of information, it also allows you to change parameters within the
992kernel. Be very careful when attempting this. You can optimize your system,
993but you can also cause it to crash. Never alter kernel parameters on a
994production system. Set up a development machine and test to make sure that
995everything works the way you want it to. You may have no alternative but to
996reboot the machine once an error has been made.
997
998To change a value, simply echo the new value into the file. An example is
999given below in the section on the file system data. You need to be root to do
1000this. You can create your own boot script to perform this every time your
1001system boots.
1002
1003The files in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and
1004general things in the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files
1005can inadvertently disrupt your system, it is advisable to read both
1006documentation and source before actually making adjustments. In any case, be
1007very careful when writing to any of these files. The entries in /proc may
1008change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt
1009review the kernel documentation in the directory /usr/src/linux/Documentation.
1010This chapter is heavily based on the documentation included in the pre 2.2
1011kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel.
1012
10132.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data
1014-----------------------------------
1015
1016This subdirectory contains specific file system, file handle, inode, dentry
1017and quota information.
1018
1019Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/fs:
1020
1021dentry-state
1022------------
1023
1024Status of the directory cache. Since directory entries are dynamically
1025allocated and deallocated, this file indicates the current status. It holds
1026six values, in which the last two are not used and are always zero. The others
1027are listed in table 2-1.
1028
1029
1030Table 2-1: Status files of the directory cache
1031..............................................................................
1032 File Content
1033 nr_dentry Almost always zero
1034 nr_unused Number of unused cache entries
1035 age_limit
1036 in seconds after the entry may be reclaimed, when memory is short
1037 want_pages internally
1038..............................................................................
1039
1040dquot-nr and dquot-max
1041----------------------
1042
1043The file dquot-max shows the maximum number of cached disk quota entries.
1044
1045The file dquot-nr shows the number of allocated disk quota entries and the
1046number of free disk quota entries.
1047
1048If the number of available cached disk quotas is very low and you have a large
1049number of simultaneous system users, you might want to raise the limit.
1050
1051file-nr and file-max
1052--------------------
1053
1054The kernel allocates file handles dynamically, but doesn't free them again at
1055this time.
1056
1057The value in file-max denotes the maximum number of file handles that the
1058Linux kernel will allocate. When you get a lot of error messages about running
1059out of file handles, you might want to raise this limit. The default value is
106010% of RAM in kilobytes. To change it, just write the new number into the
1061file:
1062
1063 # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1064 4096
1065 # echo 8192 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1066 # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1067 8192
1068
1069
1070This method of revision is useful for all customizable parameters of the
1071kernel - simply echo the new value to the corresponding file.
1072
1073Historically, the three values in file-nr denoted the number of allocated file
1074handles, the number of allocated but unused file handles, and the maximum
1075number of file handles. Linux 2.6 always reports 0 as the number of free file
1076handles -- this is not an error, it just means that the number of allocated
1077file handles exactly matches the number of used file handles.
1078
1079Attempts to allocate more file descriptors than file-max are reported with
1080printk, look for "VFS: file-max limit <number> reached".
1081
1082inode-state and inode-nr
1083------------------------
1084
1085The file inode-nr contains the first two items from inode-state, so we'll skip
1086to that file...
1087
1088inode-state contains two actual numbers and five dummy values. The numbers
1089are nr_inodes and nr_free_inodes (in order of appearance).
1090
1091nr_inodes
1092~~~~~~~~~
1093
1094Denotes the number of inodes the system has allocated. This number will
1095grow and shrink dynamically.
1096
9cfe015a
ED
1097nr_open
1098-------
1099
1100Denotes the maximum number of file-handles a process can
1101allocate. Default value is 1024*1024 (1048576) which should be
1102enough for most machines. Actual limit depends on RLIMIT_NOFILE
1103resource limit.
1104
1da177e4
LT
1105nr_free_inodes
1106--------------
1107
1108Represents the number of free inodes. Ie. The number of inuse inodes is
1109(nr_inodes - nr_free_inodes).
1110
1da177e4
LT
1111aio-nr and aio-max-nr
1112---------------------
1113
1114aio-nr is the running total of the number of events specified on the
1115io_setup system call for all currently active aio contexts. If aio-nr
1116reaches aio-max-nr then io_setup will fail with EAGAIN. Note that
1117raising aio-max-nr does not result in the pre-allocation or re-sizing
1118of any kernel data structures.
1119
11202.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
1121-----------------------------------------------------------
1122
1123Besides these files, there is the subdirectory /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc. This
1124handles the kernel support for miscellaneous binary formats.
1125
1126Binfmt_misc provides the ability to register additional binary formats to the
1127Kernel without compiling an additional module/kernel. Therefore, binfmt_misc
1128needs to know magic numbers at the beginning or the filename extension of the
1129binary.
1130
1131It works by maintaining a linked list of structs that contain a description of
1132a binary format, including a magic with size (or the filename extension),
1133offset and mask, and the interpreter name. On request it invokes the given
1134interpreter with the original program as argument, as binfmt_java and
1135binfmt_em86 and binfmt_mz do. Since binfmt_misc does not define any default
1136binary-formats, you have to register an additional binary-format.
1137
1138There are two general files in binfmt_misc and one file per registered format.
1139The two general files are register and status.
1140
1141Registering a new binary format
1142-------------------------------
1143
1144To register a new binary format you have to issue the command
1145
1146 echo :name:type:offset:magic:mask:interpreter: > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
1147
1148
1149
1150with appropriate name (the name for the /proc-dir entry), offset (defaults to
11510, if omitted), magic, mask (which can be omitted, defaults to all 0xff) and
1152last but not least, the interpreter that is to be invoked (for example and
1153testing /bin/echo). Type can be M for usual magic matching or E for filename
1154extension matching (give extension in place of magic).
1155
1156Check or reset the status of the binary format handler
1157------------------------------------------------------
1158
1159If you do a cat on the file /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/status, you will get the
1160current status (enabled/disabled) of binfmt_misc. Change the status by echoing
11610 (disables) or 1 (enables) or -1 (caution: this clears all previously
1162registered binary formats) to status. For example echo 0 > status to disable
1163binfmt_misc (temporarily).
1164
1165Status of a single handler
1166--------------------------
1167
1168Each registered handler has an entry in /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc. These files
1169perform the same function as status, but their scope is limited to the actual
1170binary format. By cating this file, you also receive all related information
1171about the interpreter/magic of the binfmt.
1172
1173Example usage of binfmt_misc (emulate binfmt_java)
1174--------------------------------------------------
1175
1176 cd /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
1177 echo ':Java:M::\xca\xfe\xba\xbe::/usr/local/java/bin/javawrapper:' > register
1178 echo ':HTML:E::html::/usr/local/java/bin/appletviewer:' > register
1179 echo ':Applet:M::<!--applet::/usr/local/java/bin/appletviewer:' > register
1180 echo ':DEXE:M::\x0eDEX::/usr/bin/dosexec:' > register
1181
1182
1183These four lines add support for Java executables and Java applets (like
1184binfmt_java, additionally recognizing the .html extension with no need to put
1185<!--applet> to every applet file). You have to install the JDK and the
1186shell-script /usr/local/java/bin/javawrapper too. It works around the
1187brokenness of the Java filename handling. To add a Java binary, just create a
1188link to the class-file somewhere in the path.
1189
11902.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
1191------------------------------------------------
1192
1193This directory reflects general kernel behaviors. As I've said before, the
1194contents depend on your configuration. Here you'll find the most important
1195files, along with descriptions of what they mean and how to use them.
1196
1197acct
1198----
1199
1200The file contains three values; highwater, lowwater, and frequency.
1201
1202It exists only when BSD-style process accounting is enabled. These values
1203control its behavior. If the free space on the file system where the log lives
1204goes below lowwater percentage, accounting suspends. If it goes above
1205highwater percentage, accounting resumes. Frequency determines how often you
1206check the amount of free space (value is in seconds). Default settings are: 4,
12072, and 30. That is, suspend accounting if there is less than 2 percent free;
1208resume it if we have a value of 3 or more percent; consider information about
1209the amount of free space valid for 30 seconds
1210
1211ctrl-alt-del
1212------------
1213
1214When the value in this file is 0, ctrl-alt-del is trapped and sent to the init
1215program to handle a graceful restart. However, when the value is greater that
1216zero, Linux's reaction to this key combination will be an immediate reboot,
1217without syncing its dirty buffers.
1218
1219[NOTE]
1220 When a program (like dosemu) has the keyboard in raw mode, the
1221 ctrl-alt-del is intercepted by the program before it ever reaches the
1222 kernel tty layer, and it is up to the program to decide what to do with
1223 it.
1224
1225domainname and hostname
1226-----------------------
1227
1228These files can be controlled to set the NIS domainname and hostname of your
1229box. For the classic darkstar.frop.org a simple:
1230
1231 # echo "darkstar" > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname
1232 # echo "frop.org" > /proc/sys/kernel/domainname
1233
1234
1235would suffice to set your hostname and NIS domainname.
1236
1237osrelease, ostype and version
1238-----------------------------
1239
1240The names make it pretty obvious what these fields contain:
1241
1242 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease
1243 2.2.12
1244
1245 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/ostype
1246 Linux
1247
1248 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/version
1249 #4 Fri Oct 1 12:41:14 PDT 1999
1250
1251
1252The files osrelease and ostype should be clear enough. Version needs a little
1253more clarification. The #4 means that this is the 4th kernel built from this
1254source base and the date after it indicates the time the kernel was built. The
1255only way to tune these values is to rebuild the kernel.
1256
1257panic
1258-----
1259
1260The value in this file represents the number of seconds the kernel waits
1261before rebooting on a panic. When you use the software watchdog, the
1262recommended setting is 60. If set to 0, the auto reboot after a kernel panic
1263is disabled, which is the default setting.
1264
1265printk
1266------
1267
1268The four values in printk denote
1269* console_loglevel,
1270* default_message_loglevel,
1271* minimum_console_loglevel and
1272* default_console_loglevel
1273respectively.
1274
1275These values influence printk() behavior when printing or logging error
1276messages, which come from inside the kernel. See syslog(2) for more
1277information on the different log levels.
1278
1279console_loglevel
1280----------------
1281
1282Messages with a higher priority than this will be printed to the console.
1283
1284default_message_level
1285---------------------
1286
1287Messages without an explicit priority will be printed with this priority.
1288
1289minimum_console_loglevel
1290------------------------
1291
1292Minimum (highest) value to which the console_loglevel can be set.
1293
1294default_console_loglevel
1295------------------------
1296
1297Default value for console_loglevel.
1298
1299sg-big-buff
1300-----------
1301
1302This file shows the size of the generic SCSI (sg) buffer. At this point, you
1303can't tune it yet, but you can change it at compile time by editing
1304include/scsi/sg.h and changing the value of SG_BIG_BUFF.
1305
1306If you use a scanner with SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) you might want to set
1307this to a higher value. Refer to the SANE documentation on this issue.
1308
1309modprobe
1310--------
1311
1312The location where the modprobe binary is located. The kernel uses this
1313program to load modules on demand.
1314
1315unknown_nmi_panic
1316-----------------
1317
1318The value in this file affects behavior of handling NMI. When the value is
1319non-zero, unknown NMI is trapped and then panic occurs. At that time, kernel
1320debugging information is displayed on console.
1321
1322NMI switch that most IA32 servers have fires unknown NMI up, for example.
1323If a system hangs up, try pressing the NMI switch.
1324
22b8ab66
BW
1325panic_on_unrecovered_nmi
1326------------------------
1327
1328The default Linux behaviour on an NMI of either memory or unknown is to continue
1329operation. For many environments such as scientific computing it is preferable
1330that the box is taken out and the error dealt with than an uncorrected
1331parity/ECC error get propogated.
1332
1333A small number of systems do generate NMI's for bizarre random reasons such as
1334power management so the default is off. That sysctl works like the existing
1335panic controls already in that directory.
1336
e33e89ab
DZ
1337nmi_watchdog
1338------------
1339
1340Enables/Disables the NMI watchdog on x86 systems. When the value is non-zero
1341the NMI watchdog is enabled and will continuously test all online cpus to
8a1c8eb7
AR
1342determine whether or not they are still functioning properly. Currently,
1343passing "nmi_watchdog=" parameter at boot time is required for this function
1344to work.
e33e89ab 1345
8a1c8eb7
AR
1346If LAPIC NMI watchdog method is in use (nmi_watchdog=2 kernel parameter), the
1347NMI watchdog shares registers with oprofile. By disabling the NMI watchdog,
1348oprofile may have more registers to utilize.
1da177e4 1349
61e55d05
ND
1350msgmni
1351------
1352
1353Maximum number of message queue ids on the system.
1354This value scales to the amount of lowmem. It is automatically recomputed
1355upon memory add/remove or ipc namespace creation/removal.
1356When a value is written into this file, msgmni's value becomes fixed, i.e. it
1357is not recomputed anymore when one of the above events occurs.
1358Use auto_msgmni to change this behavior.
1359
1360auto_msgmni
1361-----------
1362
1363Enables/Disables automatic recomputing of msgmni upon memory add/remove or
1364upon ipc namespace creation/removal (see the msgmni description above).
1365Echoing "1" into this file enables msgmni automatic recomputing.
1366Echoing "0" turns it off.
1367auto_msgmni default value is 1.
1368
1da177e4
LT
1369
13702.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem
1371-----------------------------------------------
1372
1373The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation of the virtual
1374memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel.
1375
1376vfs_cache_pressure
1377------------------
1378
1379Controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for
1380caching of directory and inode objects.
1381
1382At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to
1383reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and
1384swapcache reclaim. Decreasing vfs_cache_pressure causes the kernel to prefer
1385to retain dentry and inode caches. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100
1386causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes.
1387
1388dirty_background_ratio
1389----------------------
1390
7a6560e0
AR
1391Contains, as a percentage of the dirtyable system memory (free pages + mapped
1392pages + file cache, not including locked pages and HugePages), the number of
1393pages at which the pdflush background writeback daemon will start writing out
1394dirty data.
1da177e4
LT
1395
1396dirty_ratio
1397-----------------
1398
7a6560e0
AR
1399Contains, as a percentage of the dirtyable system memory (free pages + mapped
1400pages + file cache, not including locked pages and HugePages), the number of
1401pages at which a process which is generating disk writes will itself start
1402writing out dirty data.
1da177e4
LT
1403
1404dirty_writeback_centisecs
1405-------------------------
1406
1407The pdflush writeback daemons will periodically wake up and write `old' data
1408out to disk. This tunable expresses the interval between those wakeups, in
1409100'ths of a second.
1410
1411Setting this to zero disables periodic writeback altogether.
1412
1413dirty_expire_centisecs
1414----------------------
1415
1416This tunable is used to define when dirty data is old enough to be eligible
1417for writeout by the pdflush daemons. It is expressed in 100'ths of a second.
1418Data which has been dirty in-memory for longer than this interval will be
1419written out next time a pdflush daemon wakes up.
1420
195cf453
BG
1421highmem_is_dirtyable
1422--------------------
1423
1424Only present if CONFIG_HIGHMEM is set.
1425
1426This defaults to 0 (false), meaning that the ratios set above are calculated
1427as a percentage of lowmem only. This protects against excessive scanning
1428in page reclaim, swapping and general VM distress.
1429
1430Setting this to 1 can be useful on 32 bit machines where you want to make
1431random changes within an MMAPed file that is larger than your available
1432lowmem without causing large quantities of random IO. Is is safe if the
1433behavior of all programs running on the machine is known and memory will
1434not be otherwise stressed.
1435
1da177e4
LT
1436legacy_va_layout
1437----------------
1438
1439If non-zero, this sysctl disables the new 32-bit mmap mmap layout - the kernel
1440will use the legacy (2.4) layout for all processes.
1441
7786fa9a 1442lowmem_reserve_ratio
1da177e4
LT
1443---------------------
1444
1445For some specialised workloads on highmem machines it is dangerous for
1446the kernel to allow process memory to be allocated from the "lowmem"
1447zone. This is because that memory could then be pinned via the mlock()
1448system call, or by unavailability of swapspace.
1449
1450And on large highmem machines this lack of reclaimable lowmem memory
1451can be fatal.
1452
1453So the Linux page allocator has a mechanism which prevents allocations
1454which _could_ use highmem from using too much lowmem. This means that
1455a certain amount of lowmem is defended from the possibility of being
1456captured into pinned user memory.
1457
1458(The same argument applies to the old 16 megabyte ISA DMA region. This
1459mechanism will also defend that region from allocations which could use
1460highmem or lowmem).
1461
7786fa9a
YG
1462The `lowmem_reserve_ratio' tunable determines how aggressive the kernel is
1463in defending these lower zones.
1da177e4
LT
1464
1465If you have a machine which uses highmem or ISA DMA and your
1466applications are using mlock(), or if you are running with no swap then
7786fa9a
YG
1467you probably should change the lowmem_reserve_ratio setting.
1468
1469The lowmem_reserve_ratio is an array. You can see them by reading this file.
1470-
1471% cat /proc/sys/vm/lowmem_reserve_ratio
1472256 256 32
1473-
1474Note: # of this elements is one fewer than number of zones. Because the highest
1475 zone's value is not necessary for following calculation.
1476
1477But, these values are not used directly. The kernel calculates # of protection
1478pages for each zones from them. These are shown as array of protection pages
1479in /proc/zoneinfo like followings. (This is an example of x86-64 box).
1480Each zone has an array of protection pages like this.
1481
1482-
1483Node 0, zone DMA
1484 pages free 1355
1485 min 3
1486 low 3
1487 high 4
1488 :
1489 :
1490 numa_other 0
1491 protection: (0, 2004, 2004, 2004)
1492 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1493 pagesets
1494 cpu: 0 pcp: 0
1495 :
1496-
1497These protections are added to score to judge whether this zone should be used
1498for page allocation or should be reclaimed.
1499
1500In this example, if normal pages (index=2) are required to this DMA zone and
1501pages_high is used for watermark, the kernel judges this zone should not be
1502used because pages_free(1355) is smaller than watermark + protection[2]
1503(4 + 2004 = 2008). If this protection value is 0, this zone would be used for
1504normal page requirement. If requirement is DMA zone(index=0), protection[0]
1505(=0) is used.
1506
d9195881 1507zone[i]'s protection[j] is calculated by following expression.
7786fa9a
YG
1508
1509(i < j):
1510 zone[i]->protection[j]
1511 = (total sums of present_pages from zone[i+1] to zone[j] on the node)
1512 / lowmem_reserve_ratio[i];
1513(i = j):
1514 (should not be protected. = 0;
1515(i > j):
1516 (not necessary, but looks 0)
1517
1518The default values of lowmem_reserve_ratio[i] are
1519 256 (if zone[i] means DMA or DMA32 zone)
1520 32 (others).
1521As above expression, they are reciprocal number of ratio.
1522256 means 1/256. # of protection pages becomes about "0.39%" of total present
1523pages of higher zones on the node.
1524
1525If you would like to protect more pages, smaller values are effective.
1526The minimum value is 1 (1/1 -> 100%).
1da177e4
LT
1527
1528page-cluster
1529------------
1530
1531page-cluster controls the number of pages which are written to swap in
1532a single attempt. The swap I/O size.
1533
1534It is a logarithmic value - setting it to zero means "1 page", setting
1535it to 1 means "2 pages", setting it to 2 means "4 pages", etc.
1536
1537The default value is three (eight pages at a time). There may be some
1538small benefits in tuning this to a different value if your workload is
1539swap-intensive.
1540
1541overcommit_memory
1542-----------------
1543
af97c722
CE
1544Controls overcommit of system memory, possibly allowing processes
1545to allocate (but not use) more memory than is actually available.
1546
1547
15480 - Heuristic overcommit handling. Obvious overcommits of
1549 address space are refused. Used for a typical system. It
1550 ensures a seriously wild allocation fails while allowing
1551 overcommit to reduce swap usage. root is allowed to
53cb4726 1552 allocate slightly more memory in this mode. This is the
af97c722
CE
1553 default.
1554
15551 - Always overcommit. Appropriate for some scientific
1556 applications.
1557
15582 - Don't overcommit. The total address space commit
1559 for the system is not permitted to exceed swap plus a
1560 configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM.
1561 Depending on the percentage you use, in most situations
1562 this means a process will not be killed while attempting
1563 to use already-allocated memory but will receive errors
1564 on memory allocation as appropriate.
1565
1566overcommit_ratio
1567----------------
1568
1569Percentage of physical memory size to include in overcommit calculations
1570(see above.)
1571
1572Memory allocation limit = swapspace + physmem * (overcommit_ratio / 100)
1573
1574 swapspace = total size of all swap areas
1575 physmem = size of physical memory in system
1da177e4
LT
1576
1577nr_hugepages and hugetlb_shm_group
1578----------------------------------
1579
1580nr_hugepages configures number of hugetlb page reserved for the system.
1581
1582hugetlb_shm_group contains group id that is allowed to create SysV shared
1583memory segment using hugetlb page.
1584
ed7ed365
MG
1585hugepages_treat_as_movable
1586--------------------------
1587
1588This parameter is only useful when kernelcore= is specified at boot time to
1589create ZONE_MOVABLE for pages that may be reclaimed or migrated. Huge pages
1590are not movable so are not normally allocated from ZONE_MOVABLE. A non-zero
1591value written to hugepages_treat_as_movable allows huge pages to be allocated
1592from ZONE_MOVABLE.
1593
1594Once enabled, the ZONE_MOVABLE is treated as an area of memory the huge
1595pages pool can easily grow or shrink within. Assuming that applications are
1596not running that mlock() a lot of memory, it is likely the huge pages pool
1597can grow to the size of ZONE_MOVABLE by repeatedly entering the desired value
1598into nr_hugepages and triggering page reclaim.
1599
1da177e4
LT
1600laptop_mode
1601-----------
1602
1603laptop_mode is a knob that controls "laptop mode". All the things that are
a09a20b5 1604controlled by this knob are discussed in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
1da177e4
LT
1605
1606block_dump
1607----------
1608
1609block_dump enables block I/O debugging when set to a nonzero value. More
a09a20b5 1610information on block I/O debugging is in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
1da177e4
LT
1611
1612swap_token_timeout
1613------------------
1614
1615This file contains valid hold time of swap out protection token. The Linux
1616VM has token based thrashing control mechanism and uses the token to prevent
1617unnecessary page faults in thrashing situation. The unit of the value is
1618second. The value would be useful to tune thrashing behavior.
1619
9d0243bc
AM
1620drop_caches
1621-----------
1622
1623Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, dentries and
1624inodes from memory, causing that memory to become free.
1625
1626To free pagecache:
1627 echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1628To free dentries and inodes:
1629 echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1630To free pagecache, dentries and inodes:
1631 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1632
1633As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the
1634user should run `sync' first.
1635
1636
1da177e4
LT
16372.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
1638----------------------------------------------
1639
1640Currently there is only support for CDROM drives, and for those, there is only
1641one read-only file containing information about the CD-ROM drives attached to
1642the system:
1643
1644 >cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info
1645 CD-ROM information, Id: cdrom.c 2.55 1999/04/25
1646
1647 drive name: sr0 hdb
1648 drive speed: 32 40
1649 drive # of slots: 1 0
1650 Can close tray: 1 1
1651 Can open tray: 1 1
1652 Can lock tray: 1 1
1653 Can change speed: 1 1
1654 Can select disk: 0 1
1655 Can read multisession: 1 1
1656 Can read MCN: 1 1
1657 Reports media changed: 1 1
1658 Can play audio: 1 1
1659
1660
1661You see two drives, sr0 and hdb, along with a list of their features.
1662
16632.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
1664---------------------------------------------
1665
1666This directory contains four files, which enable or disable debugging for the
1667RPC functions NFS, NFS-daemon, RPC and NLM. The default values are 0. They can
1668be set to one to turn debugging on. (The default value is 0 for each)
1669
16702.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
1671------------------------------------
1672
1673The interface to the networking parts of the kernel is located in
1674/proc/sys/net. Table 2-3 shows all possible subdirectories. You may see only
1675some of them, depending on your kernel's configuration.
1676
1677
1678Table 2-3: Subdirectories in /proc/sys/net
1679..............................................................................
1680 Directory Content Directory Content
1681 core General parameter appletalk Appletalk protocol
1682 unix Unix domain sockets netrom NET/ROM
1683 802 E802 protocol ax25 AX25
1684 ethernet Ethernet protocol rose X.25 PLP layer
1685 ipv4 IP version 4 x25 X.25 protocol
1686 ipx IPX token-ring IBM token ring
1687 bridge Bridging decnet DEC net
1688 ipv6 IP version 6
1689..............................................................................
1690
1691We will concentrate on IP networking here. Since AX15, X.25, and DEC Net are
1692only minor players in the Linux world, we'll skip them in this chapter. You'll
1693find some short info on Appletalk and IPX further on in this chapter. Review
1694the online documentation and the kernel source to get a detailed view of the
1695parameters for those protocols. In this section we'll discuss the
1696subdirectories printed in bold letters in the table above. As default values
1697are suitable for most needs, there is no need to change these values.
1698
1699/proc/sys/net/core - Network core options
1700-----------------------------------------
1701
1702rmem_default
1703------------
1704
1705The default setting of the socket receive buffer in bytes.
1706
1707rmem_max
1708--------
1709
1710The maximum receive socket buffer size in bytes.
1711
1712wmem_default
1713------------
1714
1715The default setting (in bytes) of the socket send buffer.
1716
1717wmem_max
1718--------
1719
1720The maximum send socket buffer size in bytes.
1721
1722message_burst and message_cost
1723------------------------------
1724
1725These parameters are used to limit the warning messages written to the kernel
1726log from the networking code. They enforce a rate limit to make a
1727denial-of-service attack impossible. A higher message_cost factor, results in
1728fewer messages that will be written. Message_burst controls when messages will
1729be dropped. The default settings limit warning messages to one every five
1730seconds.
1731
a2a316fd
SH
1732warnings
1733--------
1734
1735This controls console messages from the networking stack that can occur because
1736of problems on the network like duplicate address or bad checksums. Normally,
1737this should be enabled, but if the problem persists the messages can be
1738disabled.
1739
1740
1da177e4
LT
1741netdev_max_backlog
1742------------------
1743
1744Maximum number of packets, queued on the INPUT side, when the interface
1745receives packets faster than kernel can process them.
1746
1747optmem_max
1748----------
1749
1750Maximum ancillary buffer size allowed per socket. Ancillary data is a sequence
1751of struct cmsghdr structures with appended data.
1752
1753/proc/sys/net/unix - Parameters for Unix domain sockets
1754-------------------------------------------------------
1755
1756There are only two files in this subdirectory. They control the delays for
1757deleting and destroying socket descriptors.
1758
17592.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
1760--------------------------------------
1761
1762IP version 4 is still the most used protocol in Unix networking. It will be
1763replaced by IP version 6 in the next couple of years, but for the moment it's
1764the de facto standard for the internet and is used in most networking
1765environments around the world. Because of the importance of this protocol,
1766we'll have a deeper look into the subtree controlling the behavior of the IPv4
1767subsystem of the Linux kernel.
1768
1769Let's start with the entries in /proc/sys/net/ipv4.
1770
1771ICMP settings
1772-------------
1773
1774icmp_echo_ignore_all and icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts
1775----------------------------------------------------
1776
1777Turn on (1) or off (0), if the kernel should ignore all ICMP ECHO requests, or
1778just those to broadcast and multicast addresses.
1779
1780Please note that if you accept ICMP echo requests with a broadcast/multi\-cast
1781destination address your network may be used as an exploder for denial of
1782service packet flooding attacks to other hosts.
1783
1784icmp_destunreach_rate, icmp_echoreply_rate, icmp_paramprob_rate and icmp_timeexeed_rate
1785---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1786
1787Sets limits for sending ICMP packets to specific targets. A value of zero
1788disables all limiting. Any positive value sets the maximum package rate in
1789hundredth of a second (on Intel systems).
1790
1791IP settings
1792-----------
1793
1794ip_autoconfig
1795-------------
1796
1797This file contains the number one if the host received its IP configuration by
1798RARP, BOOTP, DHCP or a similar mechanism. Otherwise it is zero.
1799
1800ip_default_ttl
1801--------------
1802
1803TTL (Time To Live) for IPv4 interfaces. This is simply the maximum number of
1804hops a packet may travel.
1805
1806ip_dynaddr
1807----------
1808
1809Enable dynamic socket address rewriting on interface address change. This is
1810useful for dialup interface with changing IP addresses.
1811
1812ip_forward
1813----------
1814
1815Enable or disable forwarding of IP packages between interfaces. Changing this
1816value resets all other parameters to their default values. They differ if the
1817kernel is configured as host or router.
1818
1819ip_local_port_range
1820-------------------
1821
1822Range of ports used by TCP and UDP to choose the local port. Contains two
1823numbers, the first number is the lowest port, the second number the highest
1824local port. Default is 1024-4999. Should be changed to 32768-61000 for
1825high-usage systems.
1826
1827ip_no_pmtu_disc
1828---------------
1829
1830Global switch to turn path MTU discovery off. It can also be set on a per
1831socket basis by the applications or on a per route basis.
1832
1833ip_masq_debug
1834-------------
1835
1836Enable/disable debugging of IP masquerading.
1837
1838IP fragmentation settings
1839-------------------------
1840
1841ipfrag_high_trash and ipfrag_low_trash
1842--------------------------------------
1843
1844Maximum memory used to reassemble IP fragments. When ipfrag_high_thresh bytes
1845of memory is allocated for this purpose, the fragment handler will toss
1846packets until ipfrag_low_thresh is reached.
1847
1848ipfrag_time
1849-----------
1850
1851Time in seconds to keep an IP fragment in memory.
1852
1853TCP settings
1854------------
1855
1856tcp_ecn
1857-------
1858
fa00e7e1 1859This file controls the use of the ECN bit in the IPv4 headers. This is a new
1da177e4 1860feature about Explicit Congestion Notification, but some routers and firewalls
fa00e7e1
ML
1861block traffic that has this bit set, so it could be necessary to echo 0 to
1862/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn if you want to talk to these sites. For more info
1da177e4
LT
1863you could read RFC2481.
1864
1865tcp_retrans_collapse
1866--------------------
1867
1868Bug-to-bug compatibility with some broken printers. On retransmit, try to send
1869larger packets to work around bugs in certain TCP stacks. Can be turned off by
1870setting it to zero.
1871
1872tcp_keepalive_probes
1873--------------------
1874
1875Number of keep alive probes TCP sends out, until it decides that the
1876connection is broken.
1877
1878tcp_keepalive_time
1879------------------
1880
1881How often TCP sends out keep alive messages, when keep alive is enabled. The
1882default is 2 hours.
1883
1884tcp_syn_retries
1885---------------
1886
1887Number of times initial SYNs for a TCP connection attempt will be
1888retransmitted. Should not be higher than 255. This is only the timeout for
1889outgoing connections, for incoming connections the number of retransmits is
1890defined by tcp_retries1.
1891
1892tcp_sack
1893--------
1894
1895Enable select acknowledgments after RFC2018.
1896
1897tcp_timestamps
1898--------------
1899
1900Enable timestamps as defined in RFC1323.
1901
1902tcp_stdurg
1903----------
1904
1905Enable the strict RFC793 interpretation of the TCP urgent pointer field. The
1906default is to use the BSD compatible interpretation of the urgent pointer
1907pointing to the first byte after the urgent data. The RFC793 interpretation is
1908to have it point to the last byte of urgent data. Enabling this option may
2fe0ae78 1909lead to interoperability problems. Disabled by default.
1da177e4
LT
1910
1911tcp_syncookies
1912--------------
1913
1914Only valid when the kernel was compiled with CONFIG_SYNCOOKIES. Send out
1915syncookies when the syn backlog queue of a socket overflows. This is to ward
1916off the common 'syn flood attack'. Disabled by default.
1917
1918Note that the concept of a socket backlog is abandoned. This means the peer
1919may not receive reliable error messages from an over loaded server with
1920syncookies enabled.
1921
1922tcp_window_scaling
1923------------------
1924
1925Enable window scaling as defined in RFC1323.
1926
1927tcp_fin_timeout
1928---------------
1929
1930The length of time in seconds it takes to receive a final FIN before the
1931socket is always closed. This is strictly a violation of the TCP
1932specification, but required to prevent denial-of-service attacks.
1933
1934tcp_max_ka_probes
1935-----------------
1936
1937Indicates how many keep alive probes are sent per slow timer run. Should not
1938be set too high to prevent bursts.
1939
1940tcp_max_syn_backlog
1941-------------------
1942
1943Length of the per socket backlog queue. Since Linux 2.2 the backlog specified
1944in listen(2) only specifies the length of the backlog queue of already
1945established sockets. When more connection requests arrive Linux starts to drop
1946packets. When syncookies are enabled the packets are still answered and the
1947maximum queue is effectively ignored.
1948
1949tcp_retries1
1950------------
1951
1952Defines how often an answer to a TCP connection request is retransmitted
1953before giving up.
1954
1955tcp_retries2
1956------------
1957
1958Defines how often a TCP packet is retransmitted before giving up.
1959
1960Interface specific settings
1961---------------------------
1962
1963In the directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf you'll find one subdirectory for each
1964interface the system knows about and one directory calls all. Changes in the
1965all subdirectory affect all interfaces, whereas changes in the other
1966subdirectories affect only one interface. All directories have the same
1967entries:
1968
1969accept_redirects
1970----------------
1971
1972This switch decides if the kernel accepts ICMP redirect messages or not. The
1973default is 'yes' if the kernel is configured for a regular host and 'no' for a
1974router configuration.
1975
1976accept_source_route
1977-------------------
1978
1979Should source routed packages be accepted or declined. The default is
1980dependent on the kernel configuration. It's 'yes' for routers and 'no' for
1981hosts.
1982
1983bootp_relay
1984~~~~~~~~~~~
1985
1986Accept packets with source address 0.b.c.d with destinations not to this host
1987as local ones. It is supposed that a BOOTP relay daemon will catch and forward
1988such packets.
1989
1990The default is 0, since this feature is not implemented yet (kernel version
19912.2.12).
1992
1993forwarding
1994----------
1995
1996Enable or disable IP forwarding on this interface.
1997
1998log_martians
1999------------
2000
2001Log packets with source addresses with no known route to kernel log.
2002
2003mc_forwarding
2004-------------
2005
2006Do multicast routing. The kernel needs to be compiled with CONFIG_MROUTE and a
2007multicast routing daemon is required.
2008
2009proxy_arp
2010---------
2011
2012Does (1) or does not (0) perform proxy ARP.
2013
2014rp_filter
2015---------
2016
2017Integer value determines if a source validation should be made. 1 means yes, 0
2018means no. Disabled by default, but local/broadcast address spoofing is always
2019on.
2020
2021If you set this to 1 on a router that is the only connection for a network to
2022the net, it will prevent spoofing attacks against your internal networks
2023(external addresses can still be spoofed), without the need for additional
2024firewall rules.
2025
2026secure_redirects
2027----------------
2028
2029Accept ICMP redirect messages only for gateways, listed in default gateway
2030list. Enabled by default.
2031
2032shared_media
2033------------
2034
2035If it is not set the kernel does not assume that different subnets on this
2036device can communicate directly. Default setting is 'yes'.
2037
2038send_redirects
2039--------------
2040
2041Determines whether to send ICMP redirects to other hosts.
2042
2043Routing settings
2044----------------
2045
2046The directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/route contains several file to control
2047routing issues.
2048
2049error_burst and error_cost
2050--------------------------
2051
2052These parameters are used to limit how many ICMP destination unreachable to
2053send from the host in question. ICMP destination unreachable messages are
84eb8d06 2054sent when we cannot reach the next hop while trying to transmit a packet.
1da177e4
LT
2055It will also print some error messages to kernel logs if someone is ignoring
2056our ICMP redirects. The higher the error_cost factor is, the fewer
2057destination unreachable and error messages will be let through. Error_burst
2058controls when destination unreachable messages and error messages will be
2059dropped. The default settings limit warning messages to five every second.
2060
2061flush
2062-----
2063
2064Writing to this file results in a flush of the routing cache.
2065
2066gc_elasticity, gc_interval, gc_min_interval_ms, gc_timeout, gc_thresh
2067---------------------------------------------------------------------
2068
2069Values to control the frequency and behavior of the garbage collection
2070algorithm for the routing cache. gc_min_interval is deprecated and replaced
2071by gc_min_interval_ms.
2072
2073
2074max_size
2075--------
2076
2077Maximum size of the routing cache. Old entries will be purged once the cache
2078reached has this size.
2079
1da177e4
LT
2080redirect_load, redirect_number
2081------------------------------
2082
2083Factors which determine if more ICPM redirects should be sent to a specific
2084host. No redirects will be sent once the load limit or the maximum number of
2085redirects has been reached.
2086
2087redirect_silence
2088----------------
2089
2090Timeout for redirects. After this period redirects will be sent again, even if
2091this has been stopped, because the load or number limit has been reached.
2092
2093Network Neighbor handling
2094-------------------------
2095
2096Settings about how to handle connections with direct neighbors (nodes attached
2097to the same link) can be found in the directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh.
2098
2099As we saw it in the conf directory, there is a default subdirectory which
2100holds the default values, and one directory for each interface. The contents
2101of the directories are identical, with the single exception that the default
2102settings contain additional options to set garbage collection parameters.
2103
2104In the interface directories you'll find the following entries:
2105
2106base_reachable_time, base_reachable_time_ms
2107-------------------------------------------
2108
2109A base value used for computing the random reachable time value as specified
2110in RFC2461.
2111
2112Expression of base_reachable_time, which is deprecated, is in seconds.
2113Expression of base_reachable_time_ms is in milliseconds.
2114
2115retrans_time, retrans_time_ms
2116-----------------------------
2117
2118The time between retransmitted Neighbor Solicitation messages.
2119Used for address resolution and to determine if a neighbor is
2120unreachable.
2121
2122Expression of retrans_time, which is deprecated, is in 1/100 seconds (for
2123IPv4) or in jiffies (for IPv6).
2124Expression of retrans_time_ms is in milliseconds.
2125
2126unres_qlen
2127----------
2128
2129Maximum queue length for a pending arp request - the number of packets which
2130are accepted from other layers while the ARP address is still resolved.
2131
2132anycast_delay
2133-------------
2134
2135Maximum for random delay of answers to neighbor solicitation messages in
2136jiffies (1/100 sec). Not yet implemented (Linux does not have anycast support
2137yet).
2138
2139ucast_solicit
2140-------------
2141
2142Maximum number of retries for unicast solicitation.
2143
2144mcast_solicit
2145-------------
2146
2147Maximum number of retries for multicast solicitation.
2148
2149delay_first_probe_time
2150----------------------
2151
2152Delay for the first time probe if the neighbor is reachable. (see
2153gc_stale_time)
2154
2155locktime
2156--------
2157
2158An ARP/neighbor entry is only replaced with a new one if the old is at least
2159locktime old. This prevents ARP cache thrashing.
2160
2161proxy_delay
2162-----------
2163
2164Maximum time (real time is random [0..proxytime]) before answering to an ARP
2165request for which we have an proxy ARP entry. In some cases, this is used to
2166prevent network flooding.
2167
2168proxy_qlen
2169----------
2170
2171Maximum queue length of the delayed proxy arp timer. (see proxy_delay).
2172
53cb4726 2173app_solicit
1da177e4
LT
2174----------
2175
2176Determines the number of requests to send to the user level ARP daemon. Use 0
2177to turn off.
2178
2179gc_stale_time
2180-------------
2181
2182Determines how often to check for stale ARP entries. After an ARP entry is
2183stale it will be resolved again (which is useful when an IP address migrates
2184to another machine). When ucast_solicit is greater than 0 it first tries to
2185send an ARP packet directly to the known host When that fails and
2186mcast_solicit is greater than 0, an ARP request is broadcasted.
2187
21882.9 Appletalk
2189-------------
2190
2191The /proc/sys/net/appletalk directory holds the Appletalk configuration data
2192when Appletalk is loaded. The configurable parameters are:
2193
2194aarp-expiry-time
2195----------------
2196
2197The amount of time we keep an ARP entry before expiring it. Used to age out
2198old hosts.
2199
2200aarp-resolve-time
2201-----------------
2202
2203The amount of time we will spend trying to resolve an Appletalk address.
2204
2205aarp-retransmit-limit
2206---------------------
2207
2208The number of times we will retransmit a query before giving up.
2209
2210aarp-tick-time
2211--------------
2212
2213Controls the rate at which expires are checked.
2214
2215The directory /proc/net/appletalk holds the list of active Appletalk sockets
2216on a machine.
2217
2218The fields indicate the DDP type, the local address (in network:node format)
2219the remote address, the size of the transmit pending queue, the size of the
2220received queue (bytes waiting for applications to read) the state and the uid
2221owning the socket.
2222
2223/proc/net/atalk_iface lists all the interfaces configured for appletalk.It
2224shows the name of the interface, its Appletalk address, the network range on
2225that address (or network number for phase 1 networks), and the status of the
2226interface.
2227
2228/proc/net/atalk_route lists each known network route. It lists the target
2229(network) that the route leads to, the router (may be directly connected), the
2230route flags, and the device the route is using.
2231
22322.10 IPX
2233--------
2234
2235The IPX protocol has no tunable values in proc/sys/net.
2236
2237The IPX protocol does, however, provide proc/net/ipx. This lists each IPX
2238socket giving the local and remote addresses in Novell format (that is
2239network:node:port). In accordance with the strange Novell tradition,
2240everything but the port is in hex. Not_Connected is displayed for sockets that
2241are not tied to a specific remote address. The Tx and Rx queue sizes indicate
2242the number of bytes pending for transmission and reception. The state
2243indicates the state the socket is in and the uid is the owning uid of the
2244socket.
2245
2246The /proc/net/ipx_interface file lists all IPX interfaces. For each interface
2247it gives the network number, the node number, and indicates if the network is
2248the primary network. It also indicates which device it is bound to (or
2249Internal for internal networks) and the Frame Type if appropriate. Linux
2250supports 802.3, 802.2, 802.2 SNAP and DIX (Blue Book) ethernet framing for
2251IPX.
2252
2253The /proc/net/ipx_route table holds a list of IPX routes. For each route it
2254gives the destination network, the router node (or Directly) and the network
2255address of the router (or Connected) for internal networks.
2256
22572.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
2258----------------------------------------------------------
2259
2260The "mqueue" filesystem provides the necessary kernel features to enable the
2261creation of a user space library that implements the POSIX message queues
2262API (as noted by the MSG tag in the POSIX 1003.1-2001 version of the System
2263Interfaces specification.)
2264
2265The "mqueue" filesystem contains values for determining/setting the amount of
2266resources used by the file system.
2267
2268/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/queues_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2269maximum number of message queues allowed on the system.
2270
2271/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msg_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2272maximum number of messages in a queue value. In fact it is the limiting value
2273for another (user) limit which is set in mq_open invocation. This attribute of
2274a queue must be less or equal then msg_max.
2275
2276/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msgsize_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2277maximum message size value (it is every message queue's attribute set during
2278its creation).
2279
d7ff0dbf
JFM
22802.12 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score
2281------------------------------------------------------
2282
2283This file can be used to adjust the score used to select which processes
2284should be killed in an out-of-memory situation. Giving it a high score will
2285increase the likelihood of this process being killed by the oom-killer. Valid
2286values are in the range -16 to +15, plus the special value -17, which disables
2287oom-killing altogether for this process.
2288
22892.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
2290-------------------------------------------------------------
2291
2292------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2293This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer is for
2294any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_adj to tune which
2295process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.
1da177e4
LT
2296
2297------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2298Summary
2299------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2300Certain aspects of kernel behavior can be modified at runtime, without the
2301need to recompile the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the
2302/proc/sys tree can not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo
2303command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings
2304of the kernel.
2305------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f9c99463
RK
2306
23072.14 /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
2308-------------------------------------------------------
2309
2310This file contains IO statistics for each running process
2311
2312Example
2313-------
2314
2315test:/tmp # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.dat &
2316[1] 3828
2317
2318test:/tmp # cat /proc/3828/io
2319rchar: 323934931
2320wchar: 323929600
2321syscr: 632687
2322syscw: 632675
2323read_bytes: 0
2324write_bytes: 323932160
2325cancelled_write_bytes: 0
2326
2327
2328Description
2329-----------
2330
2331rchar
2332-----
2333
2334I/O counter: chars read
2335The number of bytes which this task has caused to be read from storage. This
2336is simply the sum of bytes which this process passed to read() and pread().
2337It includes things like tty IO and it is unaffected by whether or not actual
2338physical disk IO was required (the read might have been satisfied from
2339pagecache)
2340
2341
2342wchar
2343-----
2344
2345I/O counter: chars written
2346The number of bytes which this task has caused, or shall cause to be written
2347to disk. Similar caveats apply here as with rchar.
2348
2349
2350syscr
2351-----
2352
2353I/O counter: read syscalls
2354Attempt to count the number of read I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like read()
2355and pread().
2356
2357
2358syscw
2359-----
2360
2361I/O counter: write syscalls
2362Attempt to count the number of write I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like
2363write() and pwrite().
2364
2365
2366read_bytes
2367----------
2368
2369I/O counter: bytes read
2370Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process really did cause to
2371be fetched from the storage layer. Done at the submit_bio() level, so it is
2372accurate for block-backed filesystems. <please add status regarding NFS and
2373CIFS at a later time>
2374
2375
2376write_bytes
2377-----------
2378
2379I/O counter: bytes written
2380Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process caused to be sent to
2381the storage layer. This is done at page-dirtying time.
2382
2383
2384cancelled_write_bytes
2385---------------------
2386
2387The big inaccuracy here is truncate. If a process writes 1MB to a file and
2388then deletes the file, it will in fact perform no writeout. But it will have
2389been accounted as having caused 1MB of write.
2390In other words: The number of bytes which this process caused to not happen,
2391by truncating pagecache. A task can cause "negative" IO too. If this task
2392truncates some dirty pagecache, some IO which another task has been accounted
2393for (in it's write_bytes) will not be happening. We _could_ just subtract that
2394from the truncating task's write_bytes, but there is information loss in doing
2395that.
2396
2397
2398Note
2399----
2400
2401At its current implementation state, this is a bit racy on 32-bit machines: if
2402process A reads process B's /proc/pid/io while process B is updating one of
2403those 64-bit counters, process A could see an intermediate result.
2404
2405
2406More information about this can be found within the taskstats documentation in
2407Documentation/accounting.
2408
bb90110d
KH
24092.15 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
2410---------------------------------------------------------------
2411When a process is dumped, all anonymous memory is written to a core file as
2412long as the size of the core file isn't limited. But sometimes we don't want
2413to dump some memory segments, for example, huge shared memory. Conversely,
2414sometimes we want to save file-backed memory segments into a core file, not
2415only the individual files.
2416
2417/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter allows you to customize which memory segments
2418will be dumped when the <pid> process is dumped. coredump_filter is a bitmask
2419of memory types. If a bit of the bitmask is set, memory segments of the
2420corresponding memory type are dumped, otherwise they are not dumped.
2421
e575f111 2422The following 7 memory types are supported:
bb90110d
KH
2423 - (bit 0) anonymous private memory
2424 - (bit 1) anonymous shared memory
2425 - (bit 2) file-backed private memory
2426 - (bit 3) file-backed shared memory
b261dfea
HK
2427 - (bit 4) ELF header pages in file-backed private memory areas (it is
2428 effective only if the bit 2 is cleared)
e575f111
KM
2429 - (bit 5) hugetlb private memory
2430 - (bit 6) hugetlb shared memory
bb90110d
KH
2431
2432 Note that MMIO pages such as frame buffer are never dumped and vDSO pages
2433 are always dumped regardless of the bitmask status.
2434
e575f111
KM
2435 Note bit 0-4 doesn't effect any hugetlb memory. hugetlb memory are only
2436 effected by bit 5-6.
2437
2438Default value of coredump_filter is 0x23; this means all anonymous memory
2439segments and hugetlb private memory are dumped.
bb90110d
KH
2440
2441If you don't want to dump all shared memory segments attached to pid 1234,
e575f111 2442write 0x21 to the process's proc file.
bb90110d 2443
e575f111 2444 $ echo 0x21 > /proc/1234/coredump_filter
bb90110d
KH
2445
2446When a new process is created, the process inherits the bitmask status from its
2447parent. It is useful to set up coredump_filter before the program runs.
2448For example:
2449
2450 $ echo 0x7 > /proc/self/coredump_filter
2451 $ ./some_program
2452
2d4d4864
RP
24532.16 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
2454--------------------------------------------------------
2455
2456This file contains lines of the form:
2457
245836 35 98:0 /mnt1 /mnt2 rw,noatime master:1 - ext3 /dev/root rw,errors=continue
2459(1)(2)(3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)
2460
2461(1) mount ID: unique identifier of the mount (may be reused after umount)
2462(2) parent ID: ID of parent (or of self for the top of the mount tree)
2463(3) major:minor: value of st_dev for files on filesystem
2464(4) root: root of the mount within the filesystem
2465(5) mount point: mount point relative to the process's root
2466(6) mount options: per mount options
2467(7) optional fields: zero or more fields of the form "tag[:value]"
2468(8) separator: marks the end of the optional fields
2469(9) filesystem type: name of filesystem of the form "type[.subtype]"
2470(10) mount source: filesystem specific information or "none"
2471(11) super options: per super block options
2472
2473Parsers should ignore all unrecognised optional fields. Currently the
2474possible optional fields are:
2475
2476shared:X mount is shared in peer group X
2477master:X mount is slave to peer group X
97e7e0f7 2478propagate_from:X mount is slave and receives propagation from peer group X (*)
2d4d4864
RP
2479unbindable mount is unbindable
2480
97e7e0f7
MS
2481(*) X is the closest dominant peer group under the process's root. If
2482X is the immediate master of the mount, or if there's no dominant peer
2483group under the same root, then only the "master:X" field is present
2484and not the "propagate_from:X" field.
2485
2d4d4864
RP
2486For more information on mount propagation see:
2487
2488 Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.txt
2489
7ef9964e
DL
24902.17 /proc/sys/fs/epoll - Configuration options for the epoll interface
2491--------------------------------------------------------
2492
2493This directory contains configuration options for the epoll(7) interface.
2494
2495max_user_instances
2496------------------
2497
2498This is the maximum number of epoll file descriptors that a single user can
2499have open at a given time. The default value is 128, and should be enough
2500for normal users.
2501
2502max_user_watches
2503----------------
2504
2505Every epoll file descriptor can store a number of files to be monitored
2506for event readiness. Each one of these monitored files constitutes a "watch".
2507This configuration option sets the maximum number of "watches" that are
2508allowed for each user.
2509Each "watch" costs roughly 90 bytes on a 32bit kernel, and roughly 160 bytes
2510on a 64bit one.
2511The current default value for max_user_watches is the 1/32 of the available
2512low memory, divided for the "watch" cost in bytes.
2513
2514
f9c99463 2515------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7ef9964e 2516