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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 | ||
| 7 | 2.4.x update Jorge Nerin <comandante@zaralinux.com> November 14 2000 | |
| 8 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 9 | Version 1.3 Kernel version 2.2.12 | |
| 10 | Kernel version 2.4.0-test11-pre4 | |
| 11 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 12 | ||
| 13 | Table 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 | |
| 42 | ||
| 43 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 44 | Preface | |
| 45 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 46 | ||
| 47 | 0.1 Introduction/Credits | |
| 48 | ------------------------ | |
| 49 | ||
| 50 | This documentation is part of a soon (or so we hope) to be released book on | |
| 51 | the SuSE Linux distribution. As there is no complete documentation for the | |
| 52 | /proc file system and we've used many freely available sources to write these | |
| 53 | chapters, it seems only fair to give the work back to the Linux community. | |
| 54 | This work is based on the 2.2.* kernel version and the upcoming 2.4.*. I'm | |
| 55 | afraid it's still far from complete, but we hope it will be useful. As far as | |
| 56 | we know, it is the first 'all-in-one' document about the /proc file system. It | |
| 57 | is focused on the Intel x86 hardware, so if you are looking for PPC, ARM, | |
| 58 | SPARC, AXP, etc., features, you probably won't find what you are looking for. | |
| 59 | It also only covers IPv4 networking, not IPv6 nor other protocols - sorry. But | |
| 60 | additions and patches are welcome and will be added to this document if you | |
| 61 | mail them to Bodo. | |
| 62 | ||
| 63 | We'd like to thank Alan Cox, Rik van Riel, and Alexey Kuznetsov and a lot of | |
| 64 | other people for help compiling this documentation. We'd also like to extend a | |
| 65 | special thank you to Andi Kleen for documentation, which we relied on heavily | |
| 66 | to create this document, as well as the additional information he provided. | |
| 67 | Thanks to everybody else who contributed source or docs to the Linux kernel | |
| 68 | and helped create a great piece of software... :) | |
| 69 | ||
| 70 | If you have any comments, corrections or additions, please don't hesitate to | |
| 71 | contact Bodo Bauer at bb@ricochet.net. We'll be happy to add them to this | |
| 72 | document. | |
| 73 | ||
| 74 | The latest version of this document is available online at | |
| 75 | http://skaro.nightcrawler.com/~bb/Docs/Proc as HTML version. | |
| 76 | ||
| 77 | If the above direction does not works for you, ypu could try the kernel | |
| 78 | mailing list at linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org and/or try to reach me at | |
| 79 | comandante@zaralinux.com. | |
| 80 | ||
| 81 | 0.2 Legal Stuff | |
| 82 | --------------- | |
| 83 | ||
| 84 | We don't guarantee the correctness of this document, and if you come to us | |
| 85 | complaining about how you screwed up your system because of incorrect | |
| 86 | documentation, we won't feel responsible... | |
| 87 | ||
| 88 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 89 | CHAPTER 1: COLLECTING SYSTEM INFORMATION | |
| 90 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 91 | ||
| 92 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 93 | In This Chapter | |
| 94 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 95 | * Investigating the properties of the pseudo file system /proc and its | |
| 96 | ability to provide information on the running Linux system | |
| 97 | * Examining /proc's structure | |
| 98 | * Uncovering various information about the kernel and the processes running | |
| 99 | on the system | |
| 100 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 101 | ||
| 102 | ||
| 103 | The proc file system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the | |
| 104 | kernel. It can be used to obtain information about the system and to change | |
| 105 | certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl). | |
| 106 | ||
| 107 | First, we'll take a look at the read-only parts of /proc. In Chapter 2, we | |
| 108 | show you how you can use /proc/sys to change settings. | |
| 109 | ||
| 110 | 1.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories | |
| 111 | ----------------------------------- | |
| 112 | ||
| 113 | The directory /proc contains (among other things) one subdirectory for each | |
| 114 | process running on the system, which is named after the process ID (PID). | |
| 115 | ||
| 116 | The link self points to the process reading the file system. Each process | |
| 117 | subdirectory has the entries listed in Table 1-1. | |
| 118 | ||
| 119 | ||
| 120 | Table 1-1: Process specific entries in /proc | |
| 121 | .............................................................................. | |
| 122 | File Content | |
| 123 | cmdline Command line arguments | |
| 124 | cpu Current and last cpu in wich it was executed (2.4)(smp) | |
| 125 | cwd Link to the current working directory | |
| 126 | environ Values of environment variables | |
| 127 | exe Link to the executable of this process | |
| 128 | fd Directory, which contains all file descriptors | |
| 129 | maps Memory maps to executables and library files (2.4) | |
| 130 | mem Memory held by this process | |
| 131 | root Link to the root directory of this process | |
| 132 | stat Process status | |
| 133 | statm Process memory status information | |
| 134 | status Process status in human readable form | |
| 135 | wchan If CONFIG_KALLSYMS is set, a pre-decoded wchan | |
| e070ad49 | 136 | smaps Extension based on maps, presenting the rss size for each mapped file |
| 1da177e4 LT |
137 | .............................................................................. |
| 138 | ||
| 139 | For example, to get the status information of a process, all you have to do is | |
| 140 | read the file /proc/PID/status: | |
| 141 | ||
| 142 | >cat /proc/self/status | |
| 143 | Name: cat | |
| 144 | State: R (running) | |
| 145 | Pid: 5452 | |
| 146 | PPid: 743 | |
| 147 | TracerPid: 0 (2.4) | |
| 148 | Uid: 501 501 501 501 | |
| 149 | Gid: 100 100 100 100 | |
| 150 | Groups: 100 14 16 | |
| 151 | VmSize: 1112 kB | |
| 152 | VmLck: 0 kB | |
| 153 | VmRSS: 348 kB | |
| 154 | VmData: 24 kB | |
| 155 | VmStk: 12 kB | |
| 156 | VmExe: 8 kB | |
| 157 | VmLib: 1044 kB | |
| 158 | SigPnd: 0000000000000000 | |
| 159 | SigBlk: 0000000000000000 | |
| 160 | SigIgn: 0000000000000000 | |
| 161 | SigCgt: 0000000000000000 | |
| 162 | CapInh: 00000000fffffeff | |
| 163 | CapPrm: 0000000000000000 | |
| 164 | CapEff: 0000000000000000 | |
| 165 | ||
| 166 | ||
| 167 | This shows you nearly the same information you would get if you viewed it with | |
| 168 | the ps command. In fact, ps uses the proc file system to obtain its | |
| 169 | information. The statm file contains more detailed information about the | |
| 170 | process memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-2. | |
| 171 | ||
| 172 | ||
| 173 | Table 1-2: Contents of the statm files (as of 2.6.8-rc3) | |
| 174 | .............................................................................. | |
| 175 | Field Content | |
| 176 | size total program size (pages) (same as VmSize in status) | |
| 177 | resident size of memory portions (pages) (same as VmRSS in status) | |
| 178 | shared number of pages that are shared (i.e. backed by a file) | |
| 179 | trs number of pages that are 'code' (not including libs; broken, | |
| 180 | includes data segment) | |
| 181 | lrs number of pages of library (always 0 on 2.6) | |
| 182 | drs number of pages of data/stack (including libs; broken, | |
| 183 | includes library text) | |
| 184 | dt number of dirty pages (always 0 on 2.6) | |
| 185 | .............................................................................. | |
| 186 | ||
| 187 | 1.2 Kernel data | |
| 188 | --------------- | |
| 189 | ||
| 190 | Similar to the process entries, the kernel data files give information about | |
| 191 | the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in | |
| 192 | /proc and are listed in Table 1-3. Not all of these will be present in your | |
| 193 | system. It depends on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which | |
| 194 | files are there, and which are missing. | |
| 195 | ||
| 196 | Table 1-3: Kernel info in /proc | |
| 197 | .............................................................................. | |
| 198 | File Content | |
| 199 | apm Advanced power management info | |
| 200 | buddyinfo Kernel memory allocator information (see text) (2.5) | |
| 201 | bus Directory containing bus specific information | |
| 202 | cmdline Kernel command line | |
| 203 | cpuinfo Info about the CPU | |
| 204 | devices Available devices (block and character) | |
| 205 | dma Used DMS channels | |
| 206 | filesystems Supported filesystems | |
| 207 | driver Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc (2.4) | |
| 208 | execdomains Execdomains, related to security (2.4) | |
| 209 | fb Frame Buffer devices (2.4) | |
| 210 | fs File system parameters, currently nfs/exports (2.4) | |
| 211 | ide Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem | |
| 212 | interrupts Interrupt usage | |
| 213 | iomem Memory map (2.4) | |
| 214 | ioports I/O port usage | |
| 215 | irq Masks for irq to cpu affinity (2.4)(smp?) | |
| 216 | isapnp ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info (2.4) | |
| 217 | kcore Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4)) | |
| 218 | kmsg Kernel messages | |
| 219 | ksyms Kernel symbol table | |
| 220 | loadavg Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes | |
| 221 | locks Kernel locks | |
| 222 | meminfo Memory info | |
| 223 | misc Miscellaneous | |
| 224 | modules List of loaded modules | |
| 225 | mounts Mounted filesystems | |
| 226 | net Networking info (see text) | |
| 227 | partitions Table of partitions known to the system | |
| 228 | pci Depreciated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/, | |
| 229 | decoupled by lspci (2.4) | |
| 230 | rtc Real time clock | |
| 231 | scsi SCSI info (see text) | |
| 232 | slabinfo Slab pool info | |
| 233 | stat Overall statistics | |
| 234 | swaps Swap space utilization | |
| 235 | sys See chapter 2 | |
| 236 | sysvipc Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm) (2.4) | |
| 237 | tty Info of tty drivers | |
| 238 | uptime System uptime | |
| 239 | version Kernel version | |
| 240 | video bttv info of video resources (2.4) | |
| 241 | .............................................................................. | |
| 242 | ||
| 243 | You can, for example, check which interrupts are currently in use and what | |
| 244 | they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts: | |
| 245 | ||
| 246 | > cat /proc/interrupts | |
| 247 | CPU0 | |
| 248 | 0: 8728810 XT-PIC timer | |
| 249 | 1: 895 XT-PIC keyboard | |
| 250 | 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade | |
| 251 | 3: 531695 XT-PIC aha152x | |
| 252 | 4: 2014133 XT-PIC serial | |
| 253 | 5: 44401 XT-PIC pcnet_cs | |
| 254 | 8: 2 XT-PIC rtc | |
| 255 | 11: 8 XT-PIC i82365 | |
| 256 | 12: 182918 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse | |
| 257 | 13: 1 XT-PIC fpu | |
| 258 | 14: 1232265 XT-PIC ide0 | |
| 259 | 15: 7 XT-PIC ide1 | |
| 260 | NMI: 0 | |
| 261 | ||
| 262 | In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the | |
| 263 | output of a SMP machine): | |
| 264 | ||
| 265 | > cat /proc/interrupts | |
| 266 | ||
| 267 | CPU0 CPU1 | |
| 268 | 0: 1243498 1214548 IO-APIC-edge timer | |
| 269 | 1: 8949 8958 IO-APIC-edge keyboard | |
| 270 | 2: 0 0 XT-PIC cascade | |
| 271 | 5: 11286 10161 IO-APIC-edge soundblaster | |
| 272 | 8: 1 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc | |
| 273 | 9: 27422 27407 IO-APIC-edge 3c503 | |
| 274 | 12: 113645 113873 IO-APIC-edge PS/2 Mouse | |
| 275 | 13: 0 0 XT-PIC fpu | |
| 276 | 14: 22491 24012 IO-APIC-edge ide0 | |
| 277 | 15: 2183 2415 IO-APIC-edge ide1 | |
| 278 | 17: 30564 30414 IO-APIC-level eth0 | |
| 279 | 18: 177 164 IO-APIC-level bttv | |
| 280 | NMI: 2457961 2457959 | |
| 281 | LOC: 2457882 2457881 | |
| 282 | ERR: 2155 | |
| 283 | ||
| 284 | NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI | |
| 285 | (Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups. | |
| 286 | ||
| 287 | LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU. | |
| 288 | ||
| 289 | ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that | |
| 290 | connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected, | |
| 291 | the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big | |
| 292 | problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ. | |
| 293 | ||
| 294 | In this context it could be interesting to note the new irq directory in 2.4. | |
| 295 | It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity, this means that you can "hook" an | |
| 296 | IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the | |
| 297 | irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and one file; prof_cpu_mask | |
| 298 | ||
| 299 | For example | |
| 300 | > ls /proc/irq/ | |
| 301 | 0 10 12 14 16 18 2 4 6 8 prof_cpu_mask | |
| 302 | 1 11 13 15 17 19 3 5 7 9 | |
| 303 | > ls /proc/irq/0/ | |
| 304 | smp_affinity | |
| 305 | ||
| 306 | The contents of the prof_cpu_mask file and each smp_affinity file for each IRQ | |
| 307 | is the same by default: | |
| 308 | ||
| 309 | > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity | |
| 310 | ffffffff | |
| 311 | ||
| 312 | It's a bitmask, in wich you can specify wich CPUs can handle the IRQ, you can | |
| 313 | set it by doing: | |
| 314 | ||
| 315 | > echo 1 > /proc/irq/prof_cpu_mask | |
| 316 | ||
| 317 | This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo 5 | |
| 318 | wich means that only the first and fourth CPU can handle the IRQ. | |
| 319 | ||
| 320 | The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin | |
| 321 | between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has | |
| 322 | more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the | |
| 323 | best choice for almost everyone. | |
| 324 | ||
| 325 | There are three more important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys. | |
| 326 | The general rule is that the contents, or even the existence of these | |
| 327 | directories, depend on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the | |
| 328 | directory scsi may not exist. The same is true with the net, which is there | |
| 329 | only when networking support is present in the running kernel. | |
| 330 | ||
| 331 | The slabinfo file gives information about memory usage at the slab level. | |
| 332 | Linux uses slab pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2. | |
| 333 | Commonly used objects have their own slab pool (such as network buffers, | |
| 334 | directory cache, and so on). | |
| 335 | ||
| 336 | .............................................................................. | |
| 337 | ||
| 338 | > cat /proc/buddyinfo | |
| 339 | ||
| 340 | Node 0, zone DMA 0 4 5 4 4 3 ... | |
| 341 | Node 0, zone Normal 1 0 0 1 101 8 ... | |
| 342 | Node 0, zone HighMem 2 0 0 1 1 0 ... | |
| 343 | ||
| 344 | Memory fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a | |
| 345 | useful tool for helping diagnose these problems. Buddyinfo will give you a | |
| 346 | clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous | |
| 347 | allocation failed. | |
| 348 | ||
| 349 | Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are | |
| 350 | available. In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in | |
| 351 | ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE | |
| 352 | available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc... | |
| 353 | ||
| 354 | .............................................................................. | |
| 355 | ||
| 356 | meminfo: | |
| 357 | ||
| 358 | Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory. This | |
| 359 | varies by architecture and compile options. The following is from a | |
| 360 | 16GB PIII, which has highmem enabled. You may not have all of these fields. | |
| 361 | ||
| 362 | > cat /proc/meminfo | |
| 363 | ||
| 364 | ||
| 365 | MemTotal: 16344972 kB | |
| 366 | MemFree: 13634064 kB | |
| 367 | Buffers: 3656 kB | |
| 368 | Cached: 1195708 kB | |
| 369 | SwapCached: 0 kB | |
| 370 | Active: 891636 kB | |
| 371 | Inactive: 1077224 kB | |
| 372 | HighTotal: 15597528 kB | |
| 373 | HighFree: 13629632 kB | |
| 374 | LowTotal: 747444 kB | |
| 375 | LowFree: 4432 kB | |
| 376 | SwapTotal: 0 kB | |
| 377 | SwapFree: 0 kB | |
| 378 | Dirty: 968 kB | |
| 379 | Writeback: 0 kB | |
| 380 | Mapped: 280372 kB | |
| 381 | Slab: 684068 kB | |
| 382 | CommitLimit: 7669796 kB | |
| 383 | Committed_AS: 100056 kB | |
| 384 | PageTables: 24448 kB | |
| 385 | VmallocTotal: 112216 kB | |
| 386 | VmallocUsed: 428 kB | |
| 387 | VmallocChunk: 111088 kB | |
| 388 | ||
| 389 | MemTotal: Total usable ram (i.e. physical ram minus a few reserved | |
| 390 | bits and the kernel binary code) | |
| 391 | MemFree: The sum of LowFree+HighFree | |
| 392 | Buffers: Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks | |
| 393 | shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so) | |
| 394 | Cached: in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the | |
| 395 | pagecache). Doesn't include SwapCached | |
| 396 | SwapCached: Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but | |
| 397 | still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it | |
| 398 | doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already | |
| 399 | in the swapfile. This saves I/O) | |
| 400 | Active: Memory that has been used more recently and usually not | |
| 401 | reclaimed unless absolutely necessary. | |
| 402 | Inactive: Memory which has been less recently used. It is more | |
| 403 | eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes | |
| 404 | HighTotal: | |
| 405 | HighFree: Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory | |
| 406 | Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or | |
| 407 | for the pagecache. The kernel must use tricks to access | |
| 408 | this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem. | |
| 409 | LowTotal: | |
| 410 | LowFree: Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that | |
| 411 | highmem can be used for, but it is also availble for the | |
| 412 | kernel's use for its own data structures. Among many | |
| 413 | other things, it is where everything from the Slab is | |
| 414 | allocated. Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem. | |
| 415 | SwapTotal: total amount of swap space available | |
| 416 | SwapFree: Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily | |
| 417 | on the disk | |
| 418 | Dirty: Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk | |
| 419 | Writeback: Memory which is actively being written back to the disk | |
| 420 | Mapped: files which have been mmaped, such as libraries | |
| 421 | Slab: in-kernel data structures cache | |
| 422 | CommitLimit: Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'), | |
| 423 | this is the total amount of memory currently available to | |
| 424 | be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to | |
| 425 | if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in | |
| 426 | 'vm.overcommit_memory'). | |
| 427 | The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula: | |
| 428 | CommitLimit = ('vm.overcommit_ratio' * Physical RAM) + Swap | |
| 429 | For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G | |
| 430 | of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would | |
| 431 | yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G. | |
| 432 | For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation | |
| 433 | in vm/overcommit-accounting. | |
| 434 | Committed_AS: The amount of memory presently allocated on the system. | |
| 435 | The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which | |
| 436 | has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been | |
| 437 | "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G | |
| 438 | of memory, but only touches 300M of it will only show up | |
| 439 | as using 300M of memory even if it has the address space | |
| 440 | allocated for the entire 1G. This 1G is memory which has | |
| 441 | been "committed" to by the VM and can be used at any time | |
| 442 | by the allocating application. With strict overcommit | |
| 443 | enabled on the system (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'), | |
| 444 | allocations which would exceed the CommitLimit (detailed | |
| 445 | above) will not be permitted. This is useful if one needs | |
| 446 | to guarantee that processes will not fail due to lack of | |
| 447 | memory once that memory has been successfully allocated. | |
| 448 | PageTables: amount of memory dedicated to the lowest level of page | |
| 449 | tables. | |
| 450 | VmallocTotal: total size of vmalloc memory area | |
| 451 | VmallocUsed: amount of vmalloc area which is used | |
| 452 | VmallocChunk: largest contigious block of vmalloc area which is free | |
| 453 | ||
| 454 | ||
| 455 | 1.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide | |
| 456 | ---------------------------- | |
| 457 | ||
| 458 | The subdirectory /proc/ide contains information about all IDE devices of which | |
| 459 | the kernel is aware. There is one subdirectory for each IDE controller, the | |
| 460 | file drivers and a link for each IDE device, pointing to the device directory | |
| 461 | in the controller specific subtree. | |
| 462 | ||
| 463 | The file drivers contains general information about the drivers used for the | |
| 464 | IDE devices: | |
| 465 | ||
| 466 | > cat /proc/ide/drivers | |
| 467 | ide-cdrom version 4.53 | |
| 468 | ide-disk version 1.08 | |
| 469 | ||
| 470 | More detailed information can be found in the controller specific | |
| 471 | subdirectories. These are named ide0, ide1 and so on. Each of these | |
| 472 | directories contains the files shown in table 1-4. | |
| 473 | ||
| 474 | ||
| 475 | Table 1-4: IDE controller info in /proc/ide/ide? | |
| 476 | .............................................................................. | |
| 477 | File Content | |
| 478 | channel IDE channel (0 or 1) | |
| 479 | config Configuration (only for PCI/IDE bridge) | |
| 480 | mate Mate name | |
| 481 | model Type/Chipset of IDE controller | |
| 482 | .............................................................................. | |
| 483 | ||
| 484 | Each device connected to a controller has a separate subdirectory in the | |
| 485 | controllers directory. The files listed in table 1-5 are contained in these | |
| 486 | directories. | |
| 487 | ||
| 488 | ||
| 489 | Table 1-5: IDE device information | |
| 490 | .............................................................................. | |
| 491 | File Content | |
| 492 | cache The cache | |
| 493 | capacity Capacity of the medium (in 512Byte blocks) | |
| 494 | driver driver and version | |
| 495 | geometry physical and logical geometry | |
| 496 | identify device identify block | |
| 497 | media media type | |
| 498 | model device identifier | |
| 499 | settings device setup | |
| 500 | smart_thresholds IDE disk management thresholds | |
| 501 | smart_values IDE disk management values | |
| 502 | .............................................................................. | |
| 503 | ||
| 504 | The most interesting file is settings. This file contains a nice overview of | |
| 505 | the drive parameters: | |
| 506 | ||
| 507 | # cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings | |
| 508 | name value min max mode | |
| 509 | ---- ----- --- --- ---- | |
| 510 | bios_cyl 526 0 65535 rw | |
| 511 | bios_head 255 0 255 rw | |
| 512 | bios_sect 63 0 63 rw | |
| 513 | breada_readahead 4 0 127 rw | |
| 514 | bswap 0 0 1 r | |
| 515 | file_readahead 72 0 2097151 rw | |
| 516 | io_32bit 0 0 3 rw | |
| 517 | keepsettings 0 0 1 rw | |
| 518 | max_kb_per_request 122 1 127 rw | |
| 519 | multcount 0 0 8 rw | |
| 520 | nice1 1 0 1 rw | |
| 521 | nowerr 0 0 1 rw | |
| 522 | pio_mode write-only 0 255 w | |
| 523 | slow 0 0 1 rw | |
| 524 | unmaskirq 0 0 1 rw | |
| 525 | using_dma 0 0 1 rw | |
| 526 | ||
| 527 | ||
| 528 | 1.4 Networking info in /proc/net | |
| 529 | -------------------------------- | |
| 530 | ||
| 531 | The subdirectory /proc/net follows the usual pattern. Table 1-6 shows the | |
| 532 | additional values you get for IP version 6 if you configure the kernel to | |
| 533 | support this. Table 1-7 lists the files and their meaning. | |
| 534 | ||
| 535 | ||
| 536 | Table 1-6: IPv6 info in /proc/net | |
| 537 | .............................................................................. | |
| 538 | File Content | |
| 539 | udp6 UDP sockets (IPv6) | |
| 540 | tcp6 TCP sockets (IPv6) | |
| 541 | raw6 Raw device statistics (IPv6) | |
| 542 | igmp6 IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6) | |
| 543 | if_inet6 List of IPv6 interface addresses | |
| 544 | ipv6_route Kernel routing table for IPv6 | |
| 545 | rt6_stats Global IPv6 routing tables statistics | |
| 546 | sockstat6 Socket statistics (IPv6) | |
| 547 | snmp6 Snmp data (IPv6) | |
| 548 | .............................................................................. | |
| 549 | ||
| 550 | ||
| 551 | Table 1-7: Network info in /proc/net | |
| 552 | .............................................................................. | |
| 553 | File Content | |
| 554 | arp Kernel ARP table | |
| 555 | dev network devices with statistics | |
| 556 | dev_mcast the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too | |
| 557 | (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound | |
| 558 | addresses). | |
| 559 | dev_stat network device status | |
| 560 | ip_fwchains Firewall chain linkage | |
| 561 | ip_fwnames Firewall chain names | |
| 562 | ip_masq Directory containing the masquerading tables | |
| 563 | ip_masquerade Major masquerading table | |
| 564 | netstat Network statistics | |
| 565 | raw raw device statistics | |
| 566 | route Kernel routing table | |
| 567 | rpc Directory containing rpc info | |
| 568 | rt_cache Routing cache | |
| 569 | snmp SNMP data | |
| 570 | sockstat Socket statistics | |
| 571 | tcp TCP sockets | |
| 572 | tr_rif Token ring RIF routing table | |
| 573 | udp UDP sockets | |
| 574 | unix UNIX domain sockets | |
| 575 | wireless Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc) | |
| 576 | igmp IP multicast addresses, which this host joined | |
| 577 | psched Global packet scheduler parameters. | |
| 578 | netlink List of PF_NETLINK sockets | |
| 579 | ip_mr_vifs List of multicast virtual interfaces | |
| 580 | ip_mr_cache List of multicast routing cache | |
| 581 | .............................................................................. | |
| 582 | ||
| 583 | You can use this information to see which network devices are available in | |
| 584 | your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices: | |
| 585 | ||
| 586 | > cat /proc/net/dev | |
| 587 | Inter-|Receive |[... | |
| 588 | face |bytes packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[... | |
| 589 | lo: 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0 [... | |
| 590 | ppp0:15475140 20721 410 0 0 410 0 0 [... | |
| 591 | eth0: 614530 7085 0 0 0 0 0 1 [... | |
| 592 | ||
| 593 | ...] Transmit | |
| 594 | ...] bytes packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed | |
| 595 | ...] 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0 | |
| 596 | ...] 1375103 17405 0 0 0 0 0 0 | |
| 597 | ...] 1703981 5535 0 0 0 3 0 0 | |
| 598 | ||
| 599 | In addition, each Channel Bond interface has it's own directory. For | |
| 600 | example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/. | |
| 601 | It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the | |
| 602 | current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how | |
| 603 | many times the slaves link has failed. | |
| 604 | ||
| 605 | 1.5 SCSI info | |
| 606 | ------------- | |
| 607 | ||
| 608 | If you have a SCSI host adapter in your system, you'll find a subdirectory | |
| 609 | named after the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi. You'll also see a list | |
| 610 | of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi: | |
| 611 | ||
| 612 | >cat /proc/scsi/scsi | |
| 613 | Attached devices: | |
| 614 | Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00 | |
| 615 | Vendor: IBM Model: DGHS09U Rev: 03E0 | |
| 616 | Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03 | |
| 617 | Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00 | |
| 618 | Vendor: PIONEER Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S Rev: 1.04 | |
| 619 | Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02 | |
| 620 | ||
| 621 | ||
| 622 | The directory named after the driver has one file for each adapter found in | |
| 623 | the system. These files contain information about the controller, including | |
| 624 | the used IRQ and the IO address range. The amount of information shown is | |
| 625 | dependent on the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec | |
| 626 | AHA-2940 SCSI adapter: | |
| 627 | ||
| 628 | > cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0 | |
| 629 | ||
| 630 | Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4 | |
| 631 | Compile Options: | |
| 632 | TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled | |
| 633 | AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS : Disabled | |
| 634 | AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY : 5 | |
| 635 | Adapter Configuration: | |
| 636 | SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter | |
| 637 | Ultra Wide Controller | |
| 638 | PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000 | |
| 639 | Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used. | |
| 640 | Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled | |
| 641 | IRQ: 10 | |
| 642 | SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2, | |
| 643 | Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255 | |
| 644 | Interrupts: 160328 | |
| 645 | BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6 | |
| 646 | Adapter Control Word: 0x005b | |
| 647 | Extended Translation: Enabled | |
| 648 | Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff | |
| 649 | Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001 | |
| 650 | Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000 | |
| 651 | Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000 | |
| 652 | Default Tag Queue Depth: 8 | |
| 653 | Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0: | |
| 654 | {255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255} | |
| 655 | Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0: | |
| 656 | {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1} | |
| 657 | Statistics: | |
| 658 | (scsi0:0:0:0) | |
| 659 | Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8 | |
| 660 | Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0) | |
| 661 | Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes) | |
| 662 | (scsi0:0:6:0) | |
| 663 | Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15 | |
| 664 | Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0) | |
| 665 | Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes) | |
| 666 | ||
| 667 | ||
| 668 | 1.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport | |
| 669 | --------------------------------------- | |
| 670 | ||
| 671 | The directory /proc/parport contains information about the parallel ports of | |
| 672 | your system. It has one subdirectory for each port, named after the port | |
| 673 | number (0,1,2,...). | |
| 674 | ||
| 675 | These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-8. | |
| 676 | ||
| 677 | ||
| 678 | Table 1-8: Files in /proc/parport | |
| 679 | .............................................................................. | |
| 680 | File Content | |
| 681 | autoprobe Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired. | |
| 682 | devices list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the | |
| 683 | name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear | |
| 684 | against any). | |
| 685 | hardware Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel. | |
| 686 | irq IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate | |
| 687 | file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ | |
| 688 | number or none). | |
| 689 | .............................................................................. | |
| 690 | ||
| 691 | 1.7 TTY info in /proc/tty | |
| 692 | ------------------------- | |
| 693 | ||
| 694 | Information about the available and actually used tty's can be found in the | |
| 695 | directory /proc/tty.You'll find entries for drivers and line disciplines in | |
| 696 | this directory, as shown in Table 1-9. | |
| 697 | ||
| 698 | ||
| 699 | Table 1-9: Files in /proc/tty | |
| 700 | .............................................................................. | |
| 701 | File Content | |
| 702 | drivers list of drivers and their usage | |
| 703 | ldiscs registered line disciplines | |
| 704 | driver/serial usage statistic and status of single tty lines | |
| 705 | .............................................................................. | |
| 706 | ||
| 707 | To see which tty's are currently in use, you can simply look into the file | |
| 708 | /proc/tty/drivers: | |
| 709 | ||
| 710 | > cat /proc/tty/drivers | |
| 711 | pty_slave /dev/pts 136 0-255 pty:slave | |
| 712 | pty_master /dev/ptm 128 0-255 pty:master | |
| 713 | pty_slave /dev/ttyp 3 0-255 pty:slave | |
| 714 | pty_master /dev/pty 2 0-255 pty:master | |
| 715 | serial /dev/cua 5 64-67 serial:callout | |
| 716 | serial /dev/ttyS 4 64-67 serial | |
| 717 | /dev/tty0 /dev/tty0 4 0 system:vtmaster | |
| 718 | /dev/ptmx /dev/ptmx 5 2 system | |
| 719 | /dev/console /dev/console 5 1 system:console | |
| 720 | /dev/tty /dev/tty 5 0 system:/dev/tty | |
| 721 | unknown /dev/tty 4 1-63 console | |
| 722 | ||
| 723 | ||
| 724 | 1.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat | |
| 725 | ------------------------------------------------- | |
| 726 | ||
| 727 | Various pieces of information about kernel activity are available in the | |
| 728 | /proc/stat file. All of the numbers reported in this file are aggregates | |
| 729 | since the system first booted. For a quick look, simply cat the file: | |
| 730 | ||
| 731 | > cat /proc/stat | |
| 732 | cpu 2255 34 2290 22625563 6290 127 456 | |
| 733 | cpu0 1132 34 1441 11311718 3675 127 438 | |
| 734 | cpu1 1123 0 849 11313845 2614 0 18 | |
| 735 | intr 114930548 113199788 3 0 5 263 0 4 [... lots more numbers ...] | |
| 736 | ctxt 1990473 | |
| 737 | btime 1062191376 | |
| 738 | processes 2915 | |
| 739 | procs_running 1 | |
| 740 | procs_blocked 0 | |
| 741 | ||
| 742 | The very first "cpu" line aggregates the numbers in all of the other "cpuN" | |
| 743 | lines. These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing | |
| 744 | different kinds of work. Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a | |
| 745 | second). The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right: | |
| 746 | ||
| 747 | - user: normal processes executing in user mode | |
| 748 | - nice: niced processes executing in user mode | |
| 749 | - system: processes executing in kernel mode | |
| 750 | - idle: twiddling thumbs | |
| 751 | - iowait: waiting for I/O to complete | |
| 752 | - irq: servicing interrupts | |
| 753 | - softirq: servicing softirqs | |
| 754 | ||
| 755 | The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts serviced since boot time, for each | |
| 756 | of the possible system interrupts. The first column is the total of all | |
| 757 | interrupts serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular | |
| 758 | interrupt. | |
| 759 | ||
| 760 | The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs. | |
| 761 | ||
| 762 | The "btime" line gives the time at which the system booted, in seconds since | |
| 763 | the Unix epoch. | |
| 764 | ||
| 765 | The "processes" line gives the number of processes and threads created, which | |
| 766 | includes (but is not limited to) those created by calls to the fork() and | |
| 767 | clone() system calls. | |
| 768 | ||
| 769 | The "procs_running" line gives the number of processes currently running on | |
| 770 | CPUs. | |
| 771 | ||
| 772 | The "procs_blocked" line gives the number of processes currently blocked, | |
| 773 | waiting for I/O to complete. | |
| 774 | ||
| 775 | ||
| 776 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 777 | Summary | |
| 778 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 779 | The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only | |
| 780 | allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status | |
| 781 | by reading files in the hierarchy. | |
| 782 | ||
| 783 | The directory structure of /proc reflects the types of information and makes | |
| 784 | it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data. | |
| 785 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 786 | ||
| 787 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 788 | CHAPTER 2: MODIFYING SYSTEM PARAMETERS | |
| 789 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 790 | ||
| 791 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 792 | In This Chapter | |
| 793 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 794 | * Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys | |
| 795 | * Exploring the files which modify certain parameters | |
| 796 | * Review of the /proc/sys file tree | |
| 797 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 798 | ||
| 799 | ||
| 800 | A very interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only | |
| 801 | a source of information, it also allows you to change parameters within the | |
| 802 | kernel. Be very careful when attempting this. You can optimize your system, | |
| 803 | but you can also cause it to crash. Never alter kernel parameters on a | |
| 804 | production system. Set up a development machine and test to make sure that | |
| 805 | everything works the way you want it to. You may have no alternative but to | |
| 806 | reboot the machine once an error has been made. | |
| 807 | ||
| 808 | To change a value, simply echo the new value into the file. An example is | |
| 809 | given below in the section on the file system data. You need to be root to do | |
| 810 | this. You can create your own boot script to perform this every time your | |
| 811 | system boots. | |
| 812 | ||
| 813 | The files in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and | |
| 814 | general things in the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files | |
| 815 | can inadvertently disrupt your system, it is advisable to read both | |
| 816 | documentation and source before actually making adjustments. In any case, be | |
| 817 | very careful when writing to any of these files. The entries in /proc may | |
| 818 | change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt | |
| 819 | review the kernel documentation in the directory /usr/src/linux/Documentation. | |
| 820 | This chapter is heavily based on the documentation included in the pre 2.2 | |
| 821 | kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel. | |
| 822 | ||
| 823 | 2.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data | |
| 824 | ----------------------------------- | |
| 825 | ||
| 826 | This subdirectory contains specific file system, file handle, inode, dentry | |
| 827 | and quota information. | |
| 828 | ||
| 829 | Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/fs: | |
| 830 | ||
| 831 | dentry-state | |
| 832 | ------------ | |
| 833 | ||
| 834 | Status of the directory cache. Since directory entries are dynamically | |
| 835 | allocated and deallocated, this file indicates the current status. It holds | |
| 836 | six values, in which the last two are not used and are always zero. The others | |
| 837 | are listed in table 2-1. | |
| 838 | ||
| 839 | ||
| 840 | Table 2-1: Status files of the directory cache | |
| 841 | .............................................................................. | |
| 842 | File Content | |
| 843 | nr_dentry Almost always zero | |
| 844 | nr_unused Number of unused cache entries | |
| 845 | age_limit | |
| 846 | in seconds after the entry may be reclaimed, when memory is short | |
| 847 | want_pages internally | |
| 848 | .............................................................................. | |
| 849 | ||
| 850 | dquot-nr and dquot-max | |
| 851 | ---------------------- | |
| 852 | ||
| 853 | The file dquot-max shows the maximum number of cached disk quota entries. | |
| 854 | ||
| 855 | The file dquot-nr shows the number of allocated disk quota entries and the | |
| 856 | number of free disk quota entries. | |
| 857 | ||
| 858 | If the number of available cached disk quotas is very low and you have a large | |
| 859 | number of simultaneous system users, you might want to raise the limit. | |
| 860 | ||
| 861 | file-nr and file-max | |
| 862 | -------------------- | |
| 863 | ||
| 864 | The kernel allocates file handles dynamically, but doesn't free them again at | |
| 865 | this time. | |
| 866 | ||
| 867 | The value in file-max denotes the maximum number of file handles that the | |
| 868 | Linux kernel will allocate. When you get a lot of error messages about running | |
| 869 | out of file handles, you might want to raise this limit. The default value is | |
| 870 | 10% of RAM in kilobytes. To change it, just write the new number into the | |
| 871 | file: | |
| 872 | ||
| 873 | # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max | |
| 874 | 4096 | |
| 875 | # echo 8192 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max | |
| 876 | # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max | |
| 877 | 8192 | |
| 878 | ||
| 879 | ||
| 880 | This method of revision is useful for all customizable parameters of the | |
| 881 | kernel - simply echo the new value to the corresponding file. | |
| 882 | ||
| 883 | Historically, the three values in file-nr denoted the number of allocated file | |
| 884 | handles, the number of allocated but unused file handles, and the maximum | |
| 885 | number of file handles. Linux 2.6 always reports 0 as the number of free file | |
| 886 | handles -- this is not an error, it just means that the number of allocated | |
| 887 | file handles exactly matches the number of used file handles. | |
| 888 | ||
| 889 | Attempts to allocate more file descriptors than file-max are reported with | |
| 890 | printk, look for "VFS: file-max limit <number> reached". | |
| 891 | ||
| 892 | inode-state and inode-nr | |
| 893 | ------------------------ | |
| 894 | ||
| 895 | The file inode-nr contains the first two items from inode-state, so we'll skip | |
| 896 | to that file... | |
| 897 | ||
| 898 | inode-state contains two actual numbers and five dummy values. The numbers | |
| 899 | are nr_inodes and nr_free_inodes (in order of appearance). | |
| 900 | ||
| 901 | nr_inodes | |
| 902 | ~~~~~~~~~ | |
| 903 | ||
| 904 | Denotes the number of inodes the system has allocated. This number will | |
| 905 | grow and shrink dynamically. | |
| 906 | ||
| 907 | nr_free_inodes | |
| 908 | -------------- | |
| 909 | ||
| 910 | Represents the number of free inodes. Ie. The number of inuse inodes is | |
| 911 | (nr_inodes - nr_free_inodes). | |
| 912 | ||
| 1da177e4 LT |
913 | aio-nr and aio-max-nr |
| 914 | --------------------- | |
| 915 | ||
| 916 | aio-nr is the running total of the number of events specified on the | |
| 917 | io_setup system call for all currently active aio contexts. If aio-nr | |
| 918 | reaches aio-max-nr then io_setup will fail with EAGAIN. Note that | |
| 919 | raising aio-max-nr does not result in the pre-allocation or re-sizing | |
| 920 | of any kernel data structures. | |
| 921 | ||
| 922 | 2.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats | |
| 923 | ----------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 924 | ||
| 925 | Besides these files, there is the subdirectory /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc. This | |
| 926 | handles the kernel support for miscellaneous binary formats. | |
| 927 | ||
| 928 | Binfmt_misc provides the ability to register additional binary formats to the | |
| 929 | Kernel without compiling an additional module/kernel. Therefore, binfmt_misc | |
| 930 | needs to know magic numbers at the beginning or the filename extension of the | |
| 931 | binary. | |
| 932 | ||
| 933 | It works by maintaining a linked list of structs that contain a description of | |
| 934 | a binary format, including a magic with size (or the filename extension), | |
| 935 | offset and mask, and the interpreter name. On request it invokes the given | |
| 936 | interpreter with the original program as argument, as binfmt_java and | |
| 937 | binfmt_em86 and binfmt_mz do. Since binfmt_misc does not define any default | |
| 938 | binary-formats, you have to register an additional binary-format. | |
| 939 | ||
| 940 | There are two general files in binfmt_misc and one file per registered format. | |
| 941 | The two general files are register and status. | |
| 942 | ||
| 943 | Registering a new binary format | |
| 944 | ------------------------------- | |
| 945 | ||
| 946 | To register a new binary format you have to issue the command | |
| 947 | ||
| 948 | echo :name:type:offset:magic:mask:interpreter: > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register | |
| 949 | ||
| 950 | ||
| 951 | ||
| 952 | with appropriate name (the name for the /proc-dir entry), offset (defaults to | |
| 953 | 0, if omitted), magic, mask (which can be omitted, defaults to all 0xff) and | |
| 954 | last but not least, the interpreter that is to be invoked (for example and | |
| 955 | testing /bin/echo). Type can be M for usual magic matching or E for filename | |
| 956 | extension matching (give extension in place of magic). | |
| 957 | ||
| 958 | Check or reset the status of the binary format handler | |
| 959 | ------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 960 | ||
| 961 | If you do a cat on the file /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/status, you will get the | |
| 962 | current status (enabled/disabled) of binfmt_misc. Change the status by echoing | |
| 963 | 0 (disables) or 1 (enables) or -1 (caution: this clears all previously | |
| 964 | registered binary formats) to status. For example echo 0 > status to disable | |
| 965 | binfmt_misc (temporarily). | |
| 966 | ||
| 967 | Status of a single handler | |
| 968 | -------------------------- | |
| 969 | ||
| 970 | Each registered handler has an entry in /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc. These files | |
| 971 | perform the same function as status, but their scope is limited to the actual | |
| 972 | binary format. By cating this file, you also receive all related information | |
| 973 | about the interpreter/magic of the binfmt. | |
| 974 | ||
| 975 | Example usage of binfmt_misc (emulate binfmt_java) | |
| 976 | -------------------------------------------------- | |
| 977 | ||
| 978 | cd /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc | |
| 979 | echo ':Java:M::\xca\xfe\xba\xbe::/usr/local/java/bin/javawrapper:' > register | |
| 980 | echo ':HTML:E::html::/usr/local/java/bin/appletviewer:' > register | |
| 981 | echo ':Applet:M::<!--applet::/usr/local/java/bin/appletviewer:' > register | |
| 982 | echo ':DEXE:M::\x0eDEX::/usr/bin/dosexec:' > register | |
| 983 | ||
| 984 | ||
| 985 | These four lines add support for Java executables and Java applets (like | |
| 986 | binfmt_java, additionally recognizing the .html extension with no need to put | |
| 987 | <!--applet> to every applet file). You have to install the JDK and the | |
| 988 | shell-script /usr/local/java/bin/javawrapper too. It works around the | |
| 989 | brokenness of the Java filename handling. To add a Java binary, just create a | |
| 990 | link to the class-file somewhere in the path. | |
| 991 | ||
| 992 | 2.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters | |
| 993 | ------------------------------------------------ | |
| 994 | ||
| 995 | This directory reflects general kernel behaviors. As I've said before, the | |
| 996 | contents depend on your configuration. Here you'll find the most important | |
| 997 | files, along with descriptions of what they mean and how to use them. | |
| 998 | ||
| 999 | acct | |
| 1000 | ---- | |
| 1001 | ||
| 1002 | The file contains three values; highwater, lowwater, and frequency. | |
| 1003 | ||
| 1004 | It exists only when BSD-style process accounting is enabled. These values | |
| 1005 | control its behavior. If the free space on the file system where the log lives | |
| 1006 | goes below lowwater percentage, accounting suspends. If it goes above | |
| 1007 | highwater percentage, accounting resumes. Frequency determines how often you | |
| 1008 | check the amount of free space (value is in seconds). Default settings are: 4, | |
| 1009 | 2, and 30. That is, suspend accounting if there is less than 2 percent free; | |
| 1010 | resume it if we have a value of 3 or more percent; consider information about | |
| 1011 | the amount of free space valid for 30 seconds | |
| 1012 | ||
| 1013 | ctrl-alt-del | |
| 1014 | ------------ | |
| 1015 | ||
| 1016 | When the value in this file is 0, ctrl-alt-del is trapped and sent to the init | |
| 1017 | program to handle a graceful restart. However, when the value is greater that | |
| 1018 | zero, Linux's reaction to this key combination will be an immediate reboot, | |
| 1019 | without syncing its dirty buffers. | |
| 1020 | ||
| 1021 | [NOTE] | |
| 1022 | When a program (like dosemu) has the keyboard in raw mode, the | |
| 1023 | ctrl-alt-del is intercepted by the program before it ever reaches the | |
| 1024 | kernel tty layer, and it is up to the program to decide what to do with | |
| 1025 | it. | |
| 1026 | ||
| 1027 | domainname and hostname | |
| 1028 | ----------------------- | |
| 1029 | ||
| 1030 | These files can be controlled to set the NIS domainname and hostname of your | |
| 1031 | box. For the classic darkstar.frop.org a simple: | |
| 1032 | ||
| 1033 | # echo "darkstar" > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname | |
| 1034 | # echo "frop.org" > /proc/sys/kernel/domainname | |
| 1035 | ||
| 1036 | ||
| 1037 | would suffice to set your hostname and NIS domainname. | |
| 1038 | ||
| 1039 | osrelease, ostype and version | |
| 1040 | ----------------------------- | |
| 1041 | ||
| 1042 | The names make it pretty obvious what these fields contain: | |
| 1043 | ||
| 1044 | > cat /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease | |
| 1045 | 2.2.12 | |
| 1046 | ||
| 1047 | > cat /proc/sys/kernel/ostype | |
| 1048 | Linux | |
| 1049 | ||
| 1050 | > cat /proc/sys/kernel/version | |
| 1051 | #4 Fri Oct 1 12:41:14 PDT 1999 | |
| 1052 | ||
| 1053 | ||
| 1054 | The files osrelease and ostype should be clear enough. Version needs a little | |
| 1055 | more clarification. The #4 means that this is the 4th kernel built from this | |
| 1056 | source base and the date after it indicates the time the kernel was built. The | |
| 1057 | only way to tune these values is to rebuild the kernel. | |
| 1058 | ||
| 1059 | panic | |
| 1060 | ----- | |
| 1061 | ||
| 1062 | The value in this file represents the number of seconds the kernel waits | |
| 1063 | before rebooting on a panic. When you use the software watchdog, the | |
| 1064 | recommended setting is 60. If set to 0, the auto reboot after a kernel panic | |
| 1065 | is disabled, which is the default setting. | |
| 1066 | ||
| 1067 | printk | |
| 1068 | ------ | |
| 1069 | ||
| 1070 | The four values in printk denote | |
| 1071 | * console_loglevel, | |
| 1072 | * default_message_loglevel, | |
| 1073 | * minimum_console_loglevel and | |
| 1074 | * default_console_loglevel | |
| 1075 | respectively. | |
| 1076 | ||
| 1077 | These values influence printk() behavior when printing or logging error | |
| 1078 | messages, which come from inside the kernel. See syslog(2) for more | |
| 1079 | information on the different log levels. | |
| 1080 | ||
| 1081 | console_loglevel | |
| 1082 | ---------------- | |
| 1083 | ||
| 1084 | Messages with a higher priority than this will be printed to the console. | |
| 1085 | ||
| 1086 | default_message_level | |
| 1087 | --------------------- | |
| 1088 | ||
| 1089 | Messages without an explicit priority will be printed with this priority. | |
| 1090 | ||
| 1091 | minimum_console_loglevel | |
| 1092 | ------------------------ | |
| 1093 | ||
| 1094 | Minimum (highest) value to which the console_loglevel can be set. | |
| 1095 | ||
| 1096 | default_console_loglevel | |
| 1097 | ------------------------ | |
| 1098 | ||
| 1099 | Default value for console_loglevel. | |
| 1100 | ||
| 1101 | sg-big-buff | |
| 1102 | ----------- | |
| 1103 | ||
| 1104 | This file shows the size of the generic SCSI (sg) buffer. At this point, you | |
| 1105 | can't tune it yet, but you can change it at compile time by editing | |
| 1106 | include/scsi/sg.h and changing the value of SG_BIG_BUFF. | |
| 1107 | ||
| 1108 | If you use a scanner with SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) you might want to set | |
| 1109 | this to a higher value. Refer to the SANE documentation on this issue. | |
| 1110 | ||
| 1111 | modprobe | |
| 1112 | -------- | |
| 1113 | ||
| 1114 | The location where the modprobe binary is located. The kernel uses this | |
| 1115 | program to load modules on demand. | |
| 1116 | ||
| 1117 | unknown_nmi_panic | |
| 1118 | ----------------- | |
| 1119 | ||
| 1120 | The value in this file affects behavior of handling NMI. When the value is | |
| 1121 | non-zero, unknown NMI is trapped and then panic occurs. At that time, kernel | |
| 1122 | debugging information is displayed on console. | |
| 1123 | ||
| 1124 | NMI switch that most IA32 servers have fires unknown NMI up, for example. | |
| 1125 | If a system hangs up, try pressing the NMI switch. | |
| 1126 | ||
| 1127 | [NOTE] | |
| 1128 | This function and oprofile share a NMI callback. Therefore this function | |
| 1129 | cannot be enabled when oprofile is activated. | |
| 1130 | And NMI watchdog will be disabled when the value in this file is set to | |
| 1131 | non-zero. | |
| 1132 | ||
| 1133 | ||
| 1134 | 2.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem | |
| 1135 | ----------------------------------------------- | |
| 1136 | ||
| 1137 | The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation of the virtual | |
| 1138 | memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel. | |
| 1139 | ||
| 1140 | vfs_cache_pressure | |
| 1141 | ------------------ | |
| 1142 | ||
| 1143 | Controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for | |
| 1144 | caching of directory and inode objects. | |
| 1145 | ||
| 1146 | At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to | |
| 1147 | reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and | |
| 1148 | swapcache reclaim. Decreasing vfs_cache_pressure causes the kernel to prefer | |
| 1149 | to retain dentry and inode caches. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100 | |
| 1150 | causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes. | |
| 1151 | ||
| 1152 | dirty_background_ratio | |
| 1153 | ---------------------- | |
| 1154 | ||
| 1155 | Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which | |
| 1156 | the pdflush background writeback daemon will start writing out dirty data. | |
| 1157 | ||
| 1158 | dirty_ratio | |
| 1159 | ----------------- | |
| 1160 | ||
| 1161 | Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which | |
| 1162 | a process which is generating disk writes will itself start writing out dirty | |
| 1163 | data. | |
| 1164 | ||
| 1165 | dirty_writeback_centisecs | |
| 1166 | ------------------------- | |
| 1167 | ||
| 1168 | The pdflush writeback daemons will periodically wake up and write `old' data | |
| 1169 | out to disk. This tunable expresses the interval between those wakeups, in | |
| 1170 | 100'ths of a second. | |
| 1171 | ||
| 1172 | Setting this to zero disables periodic writeback altogether. | |
| 1173 | ||
| 1174 | dirty_expire_centisecs | |
| 1175 | ---------------------- | |
| 1176 | ||
| 1177 | This tunable is used to define when dirty data is old enough to be eligible | |
| 1178 | for writeout by the pdflush daemons. It is expressed in 100'ths of a second. | |
| 1179 | Data which has been dirty in-memory for longer than this interval will be | |
| 1180 | written out next time a pdflush daemon wakes up. | |
| 1181 | ||
| 1182 | legacy_va_layout | |
| 1183 | ---------------- | |
| 1184 | ||
| 1185 | If non-zero, this sysctl disables the new 32-bit mmap mmap layout - the kernel | |
| 1186 | will use the legacy (2.4) layout for all processes. | |
| 1187 | ||
| 1188 | lower_zone_protection | |
| 1189 | --------------------- | |
| 1190 | ||
| 1191 | For some specialised workloads on highmem machines it is dangerous for | |
| 1192 | the kernel to allow process memory to be allocated from the "lowmem" | |
| 1193 | zone. This is because that memory could then be pinned via the mlock() | |
| 1194 | system call, or by unavailability of swapspace. | |
| 1195 | ||
| 1196 | And on large highmem machines this lack of reclaimable lowmem memory | |
| 1197 | can be fatal. | |
| 1198 | ||
| 1199 | So the Linux page allocator has a mechanism which prevents allocations | |
| 1200 | which _could_ use highmem from using too much lowmem. This means that | |
| 1201 | a certain amount of lowmem is defended from the possibility of being | |
| 1202 | captured into pinned user memory. | |
| 1203 | ||
| 1204 | (The same argument applies to the old 16 megabyte ISA DMA region. This | |
| 1205 | mechanism will also defend that region from allocations which could use | |
| 1206 | highmem or lowmem). | |
| 1207 | ||
| 1208 | The `lower_zone_protection' tunable determines how aggressive the kernel is | |
| 1209 | in defending these lower zones. The default value is zero - no | |
| 1210 | protection at all. | |
| 1211 | ||
| 1212 | If you have a machine which uses highmem or ISA DMA and your | |
| 1213 | applications are using mlock(), or if you are running with no swap then | |
| 1214 | you probably should increase the lower_zone_protection setting. | |
| 1215 | ||
| 1216 | The units of this tunable are fairly vague. It is approximately equal | |
| 1217 | to "megabytes". So setting lower_zone_protection=100 will protect around 100 | |
| 1218 | megabytes of the lowmem zone from user allocations. It will also make | |
| 1219 | those 100 megabytes unavaliable for use by applications and by | |
| 1220 | pagecache, so there is a cost. | |
| 1221 | ||
| 1222 | The effects of this tunable may be observed by monitoring | |
| 1223 | /proc/meminfo:LowFree. Write a single huge file and observe the point | |
| 1224 | at which LowFree ceases to fall. | |
| 1225 | ||
| 1226 | A reasonable value for lower_zone_protection is 100. | |
| 1227 | ||
| 1228 | page-cluster | |
| 1229 | ------------ | |
| 1230 | ||
| 1231 | page-cluster controls the number of pages which are written to swap in | |
| 1232 | a single attempt. The swap I/O size. | |
| 1233 | ||
| 1234 | It is a logarithmic value - setting it to zero means "1 page", setting | |
| 1235 | it to 1 means "2 pages", setting it to 2 means "4 pages", etc. | |
| 1236 | ||
| 1237 | The default value is three (eight pages at a time). There may be some | |
| 1238 | small benefits in tuning this to a different value if your workload is | |
| 1239 | swap-intensive. | |
| 1240 | ||
| 1241 | overcommit_memory | |
| 1242 | ----------------- | |
| 1243 | ||
| af97c722 CE |
1244 | Controls overcommit of system memory, possibly allowing processes |
| 1245 | to allocate (but not use) more memory than is actually available. | |
| 1246 | ||
| 1247 | ||
| 1248 | 0 - Heuristic overcommit handling. Obvious overcommits of | |
| 1249 | address space are refused. Used for a typical system. It | |
| 1250 | ensures a seriously wild allocation fails while allowing | |
| 1251 | overcommit to reduce swap usage. root is allowed to | |
| 1252 | allocate slighly more memory in this mode. This is the | |
| 1253 | default. | |
| 1254 | ||
| 1255 | 1 - Always overcommit. Appropriate for some scientific | |
| 1256 | applications. | |
| 1257 | ||
| 1258 | 2 - Don't overcommit. The total address space commit | |
| 1259 | for the system is not permitted to exceed swap plus a | |
| 1260 | configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM. | |
| 1261 | Depending on the percentage you use, in most situations | |
| 1262 | this means a process will not be killed while attempting | |
| 1263 | to use already-allocated memory but will receive errors | |
| 1264 | on memory allocation as appropriate. | |
| 1265 | ||
| 1266 | overcommit_ratio | |
| 1267 | ---------------- | |
| 1268 | ||
| 1269 | Percentage of physical memory size to include in overcommit calculations | |
| 1270 | (see above.) | |
| 1271 | ||
| 1272 | Memory allocation limit = swapspace + physmem * (overcommit_ratio / 100) | |
| 1273 | ||
| 1274 | swapspace = total size of all swap areas | |
| 1275 | physmem = size of physical memory in system | |
| 1da177e4 LT |
1276 | |
| 1277 | nr_hugepages and hugetlb_shm_group | |
| 1278 | ---------------------------------- | |
| 1279 | ||
| 1280 | nr_hugepages configures number of hugetlb page reserved for the system. | |
| 1281 | ||
| 1282 | hugetlb_shm_group contains group id that is allowed to create SysV shared | |
| 1283 | memory segment using hugetlb page. | |
| 1284 | ||
| 1285 | laptop_mode | |
| 1286 | ----------- | |
| 1287 | ||
| 1288 | laptop_mode is a knob that controls "laptop mode". All the things that are | |
| 1289 | controlled by this knob are discussed in Documentation/laptop-mode.txt. | |
| 1290 | ||
| 1291 | block_dump | |
| 1292 | ---------- | |
| 1293 | ||
| 1294 | block_dump enables block I/O debugging when set to a nonzero value. More | |
| 1295 | information on block I/O debugging is in Documentation/laptop-mode.txt. | |
| 1296 | ||
| 1297 | swap_token_timeout | |
| 1298 | ------------------ | |
| 1299 | ||
| 1300 | This file contains valid hold time of swap out protection token. The Linux | |
| 1301 | VM has token based thrashing control mechanism and uses the token to prevent | |
| 1302 | unnecessary page faults in thrashing situation. The unit of the value is | |
| 1303 | second. The value would be useful to tune thrashing behavior. | |
| 1304 | ||
| 9d0243bc AM |
1305 | drop_caches |
| 1306 | ----------- | |
| 1307 | ||
| 1308 | Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, dentries and | |
| 1309 | inodes from memory, causing that memory to become free. | |
| 1310 | ||
| 1311 | To free pagecache: | |
| 1312 | echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches | |
| 1313 | To free dentries and inodes: | |
| 1314 | echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches | |
| 1315 | To free pagecache, dentries and inodes: | |
| 1316 | echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches | |
| 1317 | ||
| 1318 | As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the | |
| 1319 | user should run `sync' first. | |
| 1320 | ||
| 1321 | ||
| 1da177e4 LT |
1322 | 2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters |
| 1323 | ---------------------------------------------- | |
| 1324 | ||
| 1325 | Currently there is only support for CDROM drives, and for those, there is only | |
| 1326 | one read-only file containing information about the CD-ROM drives attached to | |
| 1327 | the system: | |
| 1328 | ||
| 1329 | >cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info | |
| 1330 | CD-ROM information, Id: cdrom.c 2.55 1999/04/25 | |
| 1331 | ||
| 1332 | drive name: sr0 hdb | |
| 1333 | drive speed: 32 40 | |
| 1334 | drive # of slots: 1 0 | |
| 1335 | Can close tray: 1 1 | |
| 1336 | Can open tray: 1 1 | |
| 1337 | Can lock tray: 1 1 | |
| 1338 | Can change speed: 1 1 | |
| 1339 | Can select disk: 0 1 | |
| 1340 | Can read multisession: 1 1 | |
| 1341 | Can read MCN: 1 1 | |
| 1342 | Reports media changed: 1 1 | |
| 1343 | Can play audio: 1 1 | |
| 1344 | ||
| 1345 | ||
| 1346 | You see two drives, sr0 and hdb, along with a list of their features. | |
| 1347 | ||
| 1348 | 2.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls | |
| 1349 | --------------------------------------------- | |
| 1350 | ||
| 1351 | This directory contains four files, which enable or disable debugging for the | |
| 1352 | RPC functions NFS, NFS-daemon, RPC and NLM. The default values are 0. They can | |
| 1353 | be set to one to turn debugging on. (The default value is 0 for each) | |
| 1354 | ||
| 1355 | 2.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff | |
| 1356 | ------------------------------------ | |
| 1357 | ||
| 1358 | The interface to the networking parts of the kernel is located in | |
| 1359 | /proc/sys/net. Table 2-3 shows all possible subdirectories. You may see only | |
| 1360 | some of them, depending on your kernel's configuration. | |
| 1361 | ||
| 1362 | ||
| 1363 | Table 2-3: Subdirectories in /proc/sys/net | |
| 1364 | .............................................................................. | |
| 1365 | Directory Content Directory Content | |
| 1366 | core General parameter appletalk Appletalk protocol | |
| 1367 | unix Unix domain sockets netrom NET/ROM | |
| 1368 | 802 E802 protocol ax25 AX25 | |
| 1369 | ethernet Ethernet protocol rose X.25 PLP layer | |
| 1370 | ipv4 IP version 4 x25 X.25 protocol | |
| 1371 | ipx IPX token-ring IBM token ring | |
| 1372 | bridge Bridging decnet DEC net | |
| 1373 | ipv6 IP version 6 | |
| 1374 | .............................................................................. | |
| 1375 | ||
| 1376 | We will concentrate on IP networking here. Since AX15, X.25, and DEC Net are | |
| 1377 | only minor players in the Linux world, we'll skip them in this chapter. You'll | |
| 1378 | find some short info on Appletalk and IPX further on in this chapter. Review | |
| 1379 | the online documentation and the kernel source to get a detailed view of the | |
| 1380 | parameters for those protocols. In this section we'll discuss the | |
| 1381 | subdirectories printed in bold letters in the table above. As default values | |
| 1382 | are suitable for most needs, there is no need to change these values. | |
| 1383 | ||
| 1384 | /proc/sys/net/core - Network core options | |
| 1385 | ----------------------------------------- | |
| 1386 | ||
| 1387 | rmem_default | |
| 1388 | ------------ | |
| 1389 | ||
| 1390 | The default setting of the socket receive buffer in bytes. | |
| 1391 | ||
| 1392 | rmem_max | |
| 1393 | -------- | |
| 1394 | ||
| 1395 | The maximum receive socket buffer size in bytes. | |
| 1396 | ||
| 1397 | wmem_default | |
| 1398 | ------------ | |
| 1399 | ||
| 1400 | The default setting (in bytes) of the socket send buffer. | |
| 1401 | ||
| 1402 | wmem_max | |
| 1403 | -------- | |
| 1404 | ||
| 1405 | The maximum send socket buffer size in bytes. | |
| 1406 | ||
| 1407 | message_burst and message_cost | |
| 1408 | ------------------------------ | |
| 1409 | ||
| 1410 | These parameters are used to limit the warning messages written to the kernel | |
| 1411 | log from the networking code. They enforce a rate limit to make a | |
| 1412 | denial-of-service attack impossible. A higher message_cost factor, results in | |
| 1413 | fewer messages that will be written. Message_burst controls when messages will | |
| 1414 | be dropped. The default settings limit warning messages to one every five | |
| 1415 | seconds. | |
| 1416 | ||
| 1417 | netdev_max_backlog | |
| 1418 | ------------------ | |
| 1419 | ||
| 1420 | Maximum number of packets, queued on the INPUT side, when the interface | |
| 1421 | receives packets faster than kernel can process them. | |
| 1422 | ||
| 1423 | optmem_max | |
| 1424 | ---------- | |
| 1425 | ||
| 1426 | Maximum ancillary buffer size allowed per socket. Ancillary data is a sequence | |
| 1427 | of struct cmsghdr structures with appended data. | |
| 1428 | ||
| 1429 | /proc/sys/net/unix - Parameters for Unix domain sockets | |
| 1430 | ------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 1431 | ||
| 1432 | There are only two files in this subdirectory. They control the delays for | |
| 1433 | deleting and destroying socket descriptors. | |
| 1434 | ||
| 1435 | 2.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings | |
| 1436 | -------------------------------------- | |
| 1437 | ||
| 1438 | IP version 4 is still the most used protocol in Unix networking. It will be | |
| 1439 | replaced by IP version 6 in the next couple of years, but for the moment it's | |
| 1440 | the de facto standard for the internet and is used in most networking | |
| 1441 | environments around the world. Because of the importance of this protocol, | |
| 1442 | we'll have a deeper look into the subtree controlling the behavior of the IPv4 | |
| 1443 | subsystem of the Linux kernel. | |
| 1444 | ||
| 1445 | Let's start with the entries in /proc/sys/net/ipv4. | |
| 1446 | ||
| 1447 | ICMP settings | |
| 1448 | ------------- | |
| 1449 | ||
| 1450 | icmp_echo_ignore_all and icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts | |
| 1451 | ---------------------------------------------------- | |
| 1452 | ||
| 1453 | Turn on (1) or off (0), if the kernel should ignore all ICMP ECHO requests, or | |
| 1454 | just those to broadcast and multicast addresses. | |
| 1455 | ||
| 1456 | Please note that if you accept ICMP echo requests with a broadcast/multi\-cast | |
| 1457 | destination address your network may be used as an exploder for denial of | |
| 1458 | service packet flooding attacks to other hosts. | |
| 1459 | ||
| 1460 | icmp_destunreach_rate, icmp_echoreply_rate, icmp_paramprob_rate and icmp_timeexeed_rate | |
| 1461 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 1462 | ||
| 1463 | Sets limits for sending ICMP packets to specific targets. A value of zero | |
| 1464 | disables all limiting. Any positive value sets the maximum package rate in | |
| 1465 | hundredth of a second (on Intel systems). | |
| 1466 | ||
| 1467 | IP settings | |
| 1468 | ----------- | |
| 1469 | ||
| 1470 | ip_autoconfig | |
| 1471 | ------------- | |
| 1472 | ||
| 1473 | This file contains the number one if the host received its IP configuration by | |
| 1474 | RARP, BOOTP, DHCP or a similar mechanism. Otherwise it is zero. | |
| 1475 | ||
| 1476 | ip_default_ttl | |
| 1477 | -------------- | |
| 1478 | ||
| 1479 | TTL (Time To Live) for IPv4 interfaces. This is simply the maximum number of | |
| 1480 | hops a packet may travel. | |
| 1481 | ||
| 1482 | ip_dynaddr | |
| 1483 | ---------- | |
| 1484 | ||
| 1485 | Enable dynamic socket address rewriting on interface address change. This is | |
| 1486 | useful for dialup interface with changing IP addresses. | |
| 1487 | ||
| 1488 | ip_forward | |
| 1489 | ---------- | |
| 1490 | ||
| 1491 | Enable or disable forwarding of IP packages between interfaces. Changing this | |
| 1492 | value resets all other parameters to their default values. They differ if the | |
| 1493 | kernel is configured as host or router. | |
| 1494 | ||
| 1495 | ip_local_port_range | |
| 1496 | ------------------- | |
| 1497 | ||
| 1498 | Range of ports used by TCP and UDP to choose the local port. Contains two | |
| 1499 | numbers, the first number is the lowest port, the second number the highest | |
| 1500 | local port. Default is 1024-4999. Should be changed to 32768-61000 for | |
| 1501 | high-usage systems. | |
| 1502 | ||
| 1503 | ip_no_pmtu_disc | |
| 1504 | --------------- | |
| 1505 | ||
| 1506 | Global switch to turn path MTU discovery off. It can also be set on a per | |
| 1507 | socket basis by the applications or on a per route basis. | |
| 1508 | ||
| 1509 | ip_masq_debug | |
| 1510 | ------------- | |
| 1511 | ||
| 1512 | Enable/disable debugging of IP masquerading. | |
| 1513 | ||
| 1514 | IP fragmentation settings | |
| 1515 | ------------------------- | |
| 1516 | ||
| 1517 | ipfrag_high_trash and ipfrag_low_trash | |
| 1518 | -------------------------------------- | |
| 1519 | ||
| 1520 | Maximum memory used to reassemble IP fragments. When ipfrag_high_thresh bytes | |
| 1521 | of memory is allocated for this purpose, the fragment handler will toss | |
| 1522 | packets until ipfrag_low_thresh is reached. | |
| 1523 | ||
| 1524 | ipfrag_time | |
| 1525 | ----------- | |
| 1526 | ||
| 1527 | Time in seconds to keep an IP fragment in memory. | |
| 1528 | ||
| 1529 | TCP settings | |
| 1530 | ------------ | |
| 1531 | ||
| 1532 | tcp_ecn | |
| 1533 | ------- | |
| 1534 | ||
| 1535 | This file controls the use of the ECN bit in the IPv4 headers, this is a new | |
| 1536 | feature about Explicit Congestion Notification, but some routers and firewalls | |
| 1537 | block trafic that has this bit set, so it could be necessary to echo 0 to | |
| 1538 | /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn, if you want to talk to this sites. For more info | |
| 1539 | you could read RFC2481. | |
| 1540 | ||
| 1541 | tcp_retrans_collapse | |
| 1542 | -------------------- | |
| 1543 | ||
| 1544 | Bug-to-bug compatibility with some broken printers. On retransmit, try to send | |
| 1545 | larger packets to work around bugs in certain TCP stacks. Can be turned off by | |
| 1546 | setting it to zero. | |
| 1547 | ||
| 1548 | tcp_keepalive_probes | |
| 1549 | -------------------- | |
| 1550 | ||
| 1551 | Number of keep alive probes TCP sends out, until it decides that the | |
| 1552 | connection is broken. | |
| 1553 | ||
| 1554 | tcp_keepalive_time | |
| 1555 | ------------------ | |
| 1556 | ||
| 1557 | How often TCP sends out keep alive messages, when keep alive is enabled. The | |
| 1558 | default is 2 hours. | |
| 1559 | ||
| 1560 | tcp_syn_retries | |
| 1561 | --------------- | |
| 1562 | ||
| 1563 | Number of times initial SYNs for a TCP connection attempt will be | |
| 1564 | retransmitted. Should not be higher than 255. This is only the timeout for | |
| 1565 | outgoing connections, for incoming connections the number of retransmits is | |
| 1566 | defined by tcp_retries1. | |
| 1567 | ||
| 1568 | tcp_sack | |
| 1569 | -------- | |
| 1570 | ||
| 1571 | Enable select acknowledgments after RFC2018. | |
| 1572 | ||
| 1573 | tcp_timestamps | |
| 1574 | -------------- | |
| 1575 | ||
| 1576 | Enable timestamps as defined in RFC1323. | |
| 1577 | ||
| 1578 | tcp_stdurg | |
| 1579 | ---------- | |
| 1580 | ||
| 1581 | Enable the strict RFC793 interpretation of the TCP urgent pointer field. The | |
| 1582 | default is to use the BSD compatible interpretation of the urgent pointer | |
| 1583 | pointing to the first byte after the urgent data. The RFC793 interpretation is | |
| 1584 | to have it point to the last byte of urgent data. Enabling this option may | |
| 1585 | lead to interoperatibility problems. Disabled by default. | |
| 1586 | ||
| 1587 | tcp_syncookies | |
| 1588 | -------------- | |
| 1589 | ||
| 1590 | Only valid when the kernel was compiled with CONFIG_SYNCOOKIES. Send out | |
| 1591 | syncookies when the syn backlog queue of a socket overflows. This is to ward | |
| 1592 | off the common 'syn flood attack'. Disabled by default. | |
| 1593 | ||
| 1594 | Note that the concept of a socket backlog is abandoned. This means the peer | |
| 1595 | may not receive reliable error messages from an over loaded server with | |
| 1596 | syncookies enabled. | |
| 1597 | ||
| 1598 | tcp_window_scaling | |
| 1599 | ------------------ | |
| 1600 | ||
| 1601 | Enable window scaling as defined in RFC1323. | |
| 1602 | ||
| 1603 | tcp_fin_timeout | |
| 1604 | --------------- | |
| 1605 | ||
| 1606 | The length of time in seconds it takes to receive a final FIN before the | |
| 1607 | socket is always closed. This is strictly a violation of the TCP | |
| 1608 | specification, but required to prevent denial-of-service attacks. | |
| 1609 | ||
| 1610 | tcp_max_ka_probes | |
| 1611 | ----------------- | |
| 1612 | ||
| 1613 | Indicates how many keep alive probes are sent per slow timer run. Should not | |
| 1614 | be set too high to prevent bursts. | |
| 1615 | ||
| 1616 | tcp_max_syn_backlog | |
| 1617 | ------------------- | |
| 1618 | ||
| 1619 | Length of the per socket backlog queue. Since Linux 2.2 the backlog specified | |
| 1620 | in listen(2) only specifies the length of the backlog queue of already | |
| 1621 | established sockets. When more connection requests arrive Linux starts to drop | |
| 1622 | packets. When syncookies are enabled the packets are still answered and the | |
| 1623 | maximum queue is effectively ignored. | |
| 1624 | ||
| 1625 | tcp_retries1 | |
| 1626 | ------------ | |
| 1627 | ||
| 1628 | Defines how often an answer to a TCP connection request is retransmitted | |
| 1629 | before giving up. | |
| 1630 | ||
| 1631 | tcp_retries2 | |
| 1632 | ------------ | |
| 1633 | ||
| 1634 | Defines how often a TCP packet is retransmitted before giving up. | |
| 1635 | ||
| 1636 | Interface specific settings | |
| 1637 | --------------------------- | |
| 1638 | ||
| 1639 | In the directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf you'll find one subdirectory for each | |
| 1640 | interface the system knows about and one directory calls all. Changes in the | |
| 1641 | all subdirectory affect all interfaces, whereas changes in the other | |
| 1642 | subdirectories affect only one interface. All directories have the same | |
| 1643 | entries: | |
| 1644 | ||
| 1645 | accept_redirects | |
| 1646 | ---------------- | |
| 1647 | ||
| 1648 | This switch decides if the kernel accepts ICMP redirect messages or not. The | |
| 1649 | default is 'yes' if the kernel is configured for a regular host and 'no' for a | |
| 1650 | router configuration. | |
| 1651 | ||
| 1652 | accept_source_route | |
| 1653 | ------------------- | |
| 1654 | ||
| 1655 | Should source routed packages be accepted or declined. The default is | |
| 1656 | dependent on the kernel configuration. It's 'yes' for routers and 'no' for | |
| 1657 | hosts. | |
| 1658 | ||
| 1659 | bootp_relay | |
| 1660 | ~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| 1661 | ||
| 1662 | Accept packets with source address 0.b.c.d with destinations not to this host | |
| 1663 | as local ones. It is supposed that a BOOTP relay daemon will catch and forward | |
| 1664 | such packets. | |
| 1665 | ||
| 1666 | The default is 0, since this feature is not implemented yet (kernel version | |
| 1667 | 2.2.12). | |
| 1668 | ||
| 1669 | forwarding | |
| 1670 | ---------- | |
| 1671 | ||
| 1672 | Enable or disable IP forwarding on this interface. | |
| 1673 | ||
| 1674 | log_martians | |
| 1675 | ------------ | |
| 1676 | ||
| 1677 | Log packets with source addresses with no known route to kernel log. | |
| 1678 | ||
| 1679 | mc_forwarding | |
| 1680 | ------------- | |
| 1681 | ||
| 1682 | Do multicast routing. The kernel needs to be compiled with CONFIG_MROUTE and a | |
| 1683 | multicast routing daemon is required. | |
| 1684 | ||
| 1685 | proxy_arp | |
| 1686 | --------- | |
| 1687 | ||
| 1688 | Does (1) or does not (0) perform proxy ARP. | |
| 1689 | ||
| 1690 | rp_filter | |
| 1691 | --------- | |
| 1692 | ||
| 1693 | Integer value determines if a source validation should be made. 1 means yes, 0 | |
| 1694 | means no. Disabled by default, but local/broadcast address spoofing is always | |
| 1695 | on. | |
| 1696 | ||
| 1697 | If you set this to 1 on a router that is the only connection for a network to | |
| 1698 | the net, it will prevent spoofing attacks against your internal networks | |
| 1699 | (external addresses can still be spoofed), without the need for additional | |
| 1700 | firewall rules. | |
| 1701 | ||
| 1702 | secure_redirects | |
| 1703 | ---------------- | |
| 1704 | ||
| 1705 | Accept ICMP redirect messages only for gateways, listed in default gateway | |
| 1706 | list. Enabled by default. | |
| 1707 | ||
| 1708 | shared_media | |
| 1709 | ------------ | |
| 1710 | ||
| 1711 | If it is not set the kernel does not assume that different subnets on this | |
| 1712 | device can communicate directly. Default setting is 'yes'. | |
| 1713 | ||
| 1714 | send_redirects | |
| 1715 | -------------- | |
| 1716 | ||
| 1717 | Determines whether to send ICMP redirects to other hosts. | |
| 1718 | ||
| 1719 | Routing settings | |
| 1720 | ---------------- | |
| 1721 | ||
| 1722 | The directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/route contains several file to control | |
| 1723 | routing issues. | |
| 1724 | ||
| 1725 | error_burst and error_cost | |
| 1726 | -------------------------- | |
| 1727 | ||
| 1728 | These parameters are used to limit how many ICMP destination unreachable to | |
| 1729 | send from the host in question. ICMP destination unreachable messages are | |
| 1730 | sent when we can not reach the next hop, while trying to transmit a packet. | |
| 1731 | It will also print some error messages to kernel logs if someone is ignoring | |
| 1732 | our ICMP redirects. The higher the error_cost factor is, the fewer | |
| 1733 | destination unreachable and error messages will be let through. Error_burst | |
| 1734 | controls when destination unreachable messages and error messages will be | |
| 1735 | dropped. The default settings limit warning messages to five every second. | |
| 1736 | ||
| 1737 | flush | |
| 1738 | ----- | |
| 1739 | ||
| 1740 | Writing to this file results in a flush of the routing cache. | |
| 1741 | ||
| 1742 | gc_elasticity, gc_interval, gc_min_interval_ms, gc_timeout, gc_thresh | |
| 1743 | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 1744 | ||
| 1745 | Values to control the frequency and behavior of the garbage collection | |
| 1746 | algorithm for the routing cache. gc_min_interval is deprecated and replaced | |
| 1747 | by gc_min_interval_ms. | |
| 1748 | ||
| 1749 | ||
| 1750 | max_size | |
| 1751 | -------- | |
| 1752 | ||
| 1753 | Maximum size of the routing cache. Old entries will be purged once the cache | |
| 1754 | reached has this size. | |
| 1755 | ||
| 1756 | max_delay, min_delay | |
| 1757 | -------------------- | |
| 1758 | ||
| 1759 | Delays for flushing the routing cache. | |
| 1760 | ||
| 1761 | redirect_load, redirect_number | |
| 1762 | ------------------------------ | |
| 1763 | ||
| 1764 | Factors which determine if more ICPM redirects should be sent to a specific | |
| 1765 | host. No redirects will be sent once the load limit or the maximum number of | |
| 1766 | redirects has been reached. | |
| 1767 | ||
| 1768 | redirect_silence | |
| 1769 | ---------------- | |
| 1770 | ||
| 1771 | Timeout for redirects. After this period redirects will be sent again, even if | |
| 1772 | this has been stopped, because the load or number limit has been reached. | |
| 1773 | ||
| 1774 | Network Neighbor handling | |
| 1775 | ------------------------- | |
| 1776 | ||
| 1777 | Settings about how to handle connections with direct neighbors (nodes attached | |
| 1778 | to the same link) can be found in the directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh. | |
| 1779 | ||
| 1780 | As we saw it in the conf directory, there is a default subdirectory which | |
| 1781 | holds the default values, and one directory for each interface. The contents | |
| 1782 | of the directories are identical, with the single exception that the default | |
| 1783 | settings contain additional options to set garbage collection parameters. | |
| 1784 | ||
| 1785 | In the interface directories you'll find the following entries: | |
| 1786 | ||
| 1787 | base_reachable_time, base_reachable_time_ms | |
| 1788 | ------------------------------------------- | |
| 1789 | ||
| 1790 | A base value used for computing the random reachable time value as specified | |
| 1791 | in RFC2461. | |
| 1792 | ||
| 1793 | Expression of base_reachable_time, which is deprecated, is in seconds. | |
| 1794 | Expression of base_reachable_time_ms is in milliseconds. | |
| 1795 | ||
| 1796 | retrans_time, retrans_time_ms | |
| 1797 | ----------------------------- | |
| 1798 | ||
| 1799 | The time between retransmitted Neighbor Solicitation messages. | |
| 1800 | Used for address resolution and to determine if a neighbor is | |
| 1801 | unreachable. | |
| 1802 | ||
| 1803 | Expression of retrans_time, which is deprecated, is in 1/100 seconds (for | |
| 1804 | IPv4) or in jiffies (for IPv6). | |
| 1805 | Expression of retrans_time_ms is in milliseconds. | |
| 1806 | ||
| 1807 | unres_qlen | |
| 1808 | ---------- | |
| 1809 | ||
| 1810 | Maximum queue length for a pending arp request - the number of packets which | |
| 1811 | are accepted from other layers while the ARP address is still resolved. | |
| 1812 | ||
| 1813 | anycast_delay | |
| 1814 | ------------- | |
| 1815 | ||
| 1816 | Maximum for random delay of answers to neighbor solicitation messages in | |
| 1817 | jiffies (1/100 sec). Not yet implemented (Linux does not have anycast support | |
| 1818 | yet). | |
| 1819 | ||
| 1820 | ucast_solicit | |
| 1821 | ------------- | |
| 1822 | ||
| 1823 | Maximum number of retries for unicast solicitation. | |
| 1824 | ||
| 1825 | mcast_solicit | |
| 1826 | ------------- | |
| 1827 | ||
| 1828 | Maximum number of retries for multicast solicitation. | |
| 1829 | ||
| 1830 | delay_first_probe_time | |
| 1831 | ---------------------- | |
| 1832 | ||
| 1833 | Delay for the first time probe if the neighbor is reachable. (see | |
| 1834 | gc_stale_time) | |
| 1835 | ||
| 1836 | locktime | |
| 1837 | -------- | |
| 1838 | ||
| 1839 | An ARP/neighbor entry is only replaced with a new one if the old is at least | |
| 1840 | locktime old. This prevents ARP cache thrashing. | |
| 1841 | ||
| 1842 | proxy_delay | |
| 1843 | ----------- | |
| 1844 | ||
| 1845 | Maximum time (real time is random [0..proxytime]) before answering to an ARP | |
| 1846 | request for which we have an proxy ARP entry. In some cases, this is used to | |
| 1847 | prevent network flooding. | |
| 1848 | ||
| 1849 | proxy_qlen | |
| 1850 | ---------- | |
| 1851 | ||
| 1852 | Maximum queue length of the delayed proxy arp timer. (see proxy_delay). | |
| 1853 | ||
| 1854 | app_solcit | |
| 1855 | ---------- | |
| 1856 | ||
| 1857 | Determines the number of requests to send to the user level ARP daemon. Use 0 | |
| 1858 | to turn off. | |
| 1859 | ||
| 1860 | gc_stale_time | |
| 1861 | ------------- | |
| 1862 | ||
| 1863 | Determines how often to check for stale ARP entries. After an ARP entry is | |
| 1864 | stale it will be resolved again (which is useful when an IP address migrates | |
| 1865 | to another machine). When ucast_solicit is greater than 0 it first tries to | |
| 1866 | send an ARP packet directly to the known host When that fails and | |
| 1867 | mcast_solicit is greater than 0, an ARP request is broadcasted. | |
| 1868 | ||
| 1869 | 2.9 Appletalk | |
| 1870 | ------------- | |
| 1871 | ||
| 1872 | The /proc/sys/net/appletalk directory holds the Appletalk configuration data | |
| 1873 | when Appletalk is loaded. The configurable parameters are: | |
| 1874 | ||
| 1875 | aarp-expiry-time | |
| 1876 | ---------------- | |
| 1877 | ||
| 1878 | The amount of time we keep an ARP entry before expiring it. Used to age out | |
| 1879 | old hosts. | |
| 1880 | ||
| 1881 | aarp-resolve-time | |
| 1882 | ----------------- | |
| 1883 | ||
| 1884 | The amount of time we will spend trying to resolve an Appletalk address. | |
| 1885 | ||
| 1886 | aarp-retransmit-limit | |
| 1887 | --------------------- | |
| 1888 | ||
| 1889 | The number of times we will retransmit a query before giving up. | |
| 1890 | ||
| 1891 | aarp-tick-time | |
| 1892 | -------------- | |
| 1893 | ||
| 1894 | Controls the rate at which expires are checked. | |
| 1895 | ||
| 1896 | The directory /proc/net/appletalk holds the list of active Appletalk sockets | |
| 1897 | on a machine. | |
| 1898 | ||
| 1899 | The fields indicate the DDP type, the local address (in network:node format) | |
| 1900 | the remote address, the size of the transmit pending queue, the size of the | |
| 1901 | received queue (bytes waiting for applications to read) the state and the uid | |
| 1902 | owning the socket. | |
| 1903 | ||
| 1904 | /proc/net/atalk_iface lists all the interfaces configured for appletalk.It | |
| 1905 | shows the name of the interface, its Appletalk address, the network range on | |
| 1906 | that address (or network number for phase 1 networks), and the status of the | |
| 1907 | interface. | |
| 1908 | ||
| 1909 | /proc/net/atalk_route lists each known network route. It lists the target | |
| 1910 | (network) that the route leads to, the router (may be directly connected), the | |
| 1911 | route flags, and the device the route is using. | |
| 1912 | ||
| 1913 | 2.10 IPX | |
| 1914 | -------- | |
| 1915 | ||
| 1916 | The IPX protocol has no tunable values in proc/sys/net. | |
| 1917 | ||
| 1918 | The IPX protocol does, however, provide proc/net/ipx. This lists each IPX | |
| 1919 | socket giving the local and remote addresses in Novell format (that is | |
| 1920 | network:node:port). In accordance with the strange Novell tradition, | |
| 1921 | everything but the port is in hex. Not_Connected is displayed for sockets that | |
| 1922 | are not tied to a specific remote address. The Tx and Rx queue sizes indicate | |
| 1923 | the number of bytes pending for transmission and reception. The state | |
| 1924 | indicates the state the socket is in and the uid is the owning uid of the | |
| 1925 | socket. | |
| 1926 | ||
| 1927 | The /proc/net/ipx_interface file lists all IPX interfaces. For each interface | |
| 1928 | it gives the network number, the node number, and indicates if the network is | |
| 1929 | the primary network. It also indicates which device it is bound to (or | |
| 1930 | Internal for internal networks) and the Frame Type if appropriate. Linux | |
| 1931 | supports 802.3, 802.2, 802.2 SNAP and DIX (Blue Book) ethernet framing for | |
| 1932 | IPX. | |
| 1933 | ||
| 1934 | The /proc/net/ipx_route table holds a list of IPX routes. For each route it | |
| 1935 | gives the destination network, the router node (or Directly) and the network | |
| 1936 | address of the router (or Connected) for internal networks. | |
| 1937 | ||
| 1938 | 2.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem | |
| 1939 | ---------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 1940 | ||
| 1941 | The "mqueue" filesystem provides the necessary kernel features to enable the | |
| 1942 | creation of a user space library that implements the POSIX message queues | |
| 1943 | API (as noted by the MSG tag in the POSIX 1003.1-2001 version of the System | |
| 1944 | Interfaces specification.) | |
| 1945 | ||
| 1946 | The "mqueue" filesystem contains values for determining/setting the amount of | |
| 1947 | resources used by the file system. | |
| 1948 | ||
| 1949 | /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/queues_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the | |
| 1950 | maximum number of message queues allowed on the system. | |
| 1951 | ||
| 1952 | /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msg_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the | |
| 1953 | maximum number of messages in a queue value. In fact it is the limiting value | |
| 1954 | for another (user) limit which is set in mq_open invocation. This attribute of | |
| 1955 | a queue must be less or equal then msg_max. | |
| 1956 | ||
| 1957 | /proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msgsize_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the | |
| 1958 | maximum message size value (it is every message queue's attribute set during | |
| 1959 | its creation). | |
| 1960 | ||
| 1961 | ||
| 1962 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 1963 | Summary | |
| 1964 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| 1965 | Certain aspects of kernel behavior can be modified at runtime, without the | |
| 1966 | need to recompile the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the | |
| 1967 | /proc/sys tree can not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo | |
| 1968 | command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings | |
| 1969 | of the kernel. | |
| 1970 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |