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1------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 T H E /proc F I L E S Y S T E M
3------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/proc/sys Terrehon Bowden <terrehon@pacbell.net> October 7 1999
5 Bodo Bauer <bb@ricochet.net>
6
72.4.x update Jorge Nerin <comandante@zaralinux.com> November 14 2000
8------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9Version 1.3 Kernel version 2.2.12
10 Kernel version 2.4.0-test11-pre4
11------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12
13Table of Contents
14-----------------
15
16 0 Preface
17 0.1 Introduction/Credits
18 0.2 Legal Stuff
19
20 1 Collecting System Information
21 1.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
22 1.2 Kernel data
23 1.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
24 1.4 Networking info in /proc/net
25 1.5 SCSI info
26 1.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
27 1.7 TTY info in /proc/tty
28 1.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
29
30 2 Modifying System Parameters
31 2.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data
32 2.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
33 2.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
34 2.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem
35 2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
36 2.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
37 2.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
38 2.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
39 2.9 Appletalk
40 2.10 IPX
41 2.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
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42 2.12 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score
43 2.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
f9c99463 44 2.14 /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
bb90110d 45 2.15 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
2d4d4864 46 2.16 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
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47
48------------------------------------------------------------------------------
49Preface
50------------------------------------------------------------------------------
51
520.1 Introduction/Credits
53------------------------
54
55This documentation is part of a soon (or so we hope) to be released book on
56the SuSE Linux distribution. As there is no complete documentation for the
57/proc file system and we've used many freely available sources to write these
58chapters, it seems only fair to give the work back to the Linux community.
59This work is based on the 2.2.* kernel version and the upcoming 2.4.*. I'm
60afraid it's still far from complete, but we hope it will be useful. As far as
61we know, it is the first 'all-in-one' document about the /proc file system. It
62is focused on the Intel x86 hardware, so if you are looking for PPC, ARM,
63SPARC, AXP, etc., features, you probably won't find what you are looking for.
64It also only covers IPv4 networking, not IPv6 nor other protocols - sorry. But
65additions and patches are welcome and will be added to this document if you
66mail them to Bodo.
67
68We'd like to thank Alan Cox, Rik van Riel, and Alexey Kuznetsov and a lot of
69other people for help compiling this documentation. We'd also like to extend a
70special thank you to Andi Kleen for documentation, which we relied on heavily
71to create this document, as well as the additional information he provided.
72Thanks to everybody else who contributed source or docs to the Linux kernel
73and helped create a great piece of software... :)
74
75If you have any comments, corrections or additions, please don't hesitate to
76contact Bodo Bauer at bb@ricochet.net. We'll be happy to add them to this
77document.
78
79The latest version of this document is available online at
80http://skaro.nightcrawler.com/~bb/Docs/Proc as HTML version.
81
82If the above direction does not works for you, ypu could try the kernel
83mailing list at linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org and/or try to reach me at
84comandante@zaralinux.com.
85
860.2 Legal Stuff
87---------------
88
89We don't guarantee the correctness of this document, and if you come to us
90complaining about how you screwed up your system because of incorrect
91documentation, we won't feel responsible...
92
93------------------------------------------------------------------------------
94CHAPTER 1: COLLECTING SYSTEM INFORMATION
95------------------------------------------------------------------------------
96
97------------------------------------------------------------------------------
98In This Chapter
99------------------------------------------------------------------------------
100* Investigating the properties of the pseudo file system /proc and its
101 ability to provide information on the running Linux system
102* Examining /proc's structure
103* Uncovering various information about the kernel and the processes running
104 on the system
105------------------------------------------------------------------------------
106
107
108The proc file system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the
109kernel. It can be used to obtain information about the system and to change
110certain kernel parameters at runtime (sysctl).
111
112First, we'll take a look at the read-only parts of /proc. In Chapter 2, we
113show you how you can use /proc/sys to change settings.
114
1151.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
116-----------------------------------
117
118The directory /proc contains (among other things) one subdirectory for each
119process running on the system, which is named after the process ID (PID).
120
121The link self points to the process reading the file system. Each process
122subdirectory has the entries listed in Table 1-1.
123
124
125Table 1-1: Process specific entries in /proc
126..............................................................................
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127 File Content
128 clear_refs Clears page referenced bits shown in smaps output
129 cmdline Command line arguments
130 cpu Current and last cpu in which it was executed (2.4)(smp)
131 cwd Link to the current working directory
132 environ Values of environment variables
133 exe Link to the executable of this process
134 fd Directory, which contains all file descriptors
135 maps Memory maps to executables and library files (2.4)
136 mem Memory held by this process
137 root Link to the root directory of this process
138 stat Process status
139 statm Process memory status information
140 status Process status in human readable form
141 wchan If CONFIG_KALLSYMS is set, a pre-decoded wchan
142 smaps Extension based on maps, the rss size for each mapped file
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143..............................................................................
144
145For example, to get the status information of a process, all you have to do is
146read the file /proc/PID/status:
147
148 >cat /proc/self/status
149 Name: cat
150 State: R (running)
151 Pid: 5452
152 PPid: 743
153 TracerPid: 0 (2.4)
154 Uid: 501 501 501 501
155 Gid: 100 100 100 100
156 Groups: 100 14 16
157 VmSize: 1112 kB
158 VmLck: 0 kB
159 VmRSS: 348 kB
160 VmData: 24 kB
161 VmStk: 12 kB
162 VmExe: 8 kB
163 VmLib: 1044 kB
164 SigPnd: 0000000000000000
165 SigBlk: 0000000000000000
166 SigIgn: 0000000000000000
167 SigCgt: 0000000000000000
168 CapInh: 00000000fffffeff
169 CapPrm: 0000000000000000
170 CapEff: 0000000000000000
171
172
173This shows you nearly the same information you would get if you viewed it with
174the ps command. In fact, ps uses the proc file system to obtain its
175information. The statm file contains more detailed information about the
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176process memory usage. Its seven fields are explained in Table 1-2. The stat
177file contains details information about the process itself. Its fields are
178explained in Table 1-3.
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179
180
181Table 1-2: Contents of the statm files (as of 2.6.8-rc3)
182..............................................................................
183 Field Content
184 size total program size (pages) (same as VmSize in status)
185 resident size of memory portions (pages) (same as VmRSS in status)
186 shared number of pages that are shared (i.e. backed by a file)
187 trs number of pages that are 'code' (not including libs; broken,
188 includes data segment)
189 lrs number of pages of library (always 0 on 2.6)
190 drs number of pages of data/stack (including libs; broken,
191 includes library text)
192 dt number of dirty pages (always 0 on 2.6)
193..............................................................................
194
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195
196Table 1-3: Contents of the stat files (as of 2.6.22-rc3)
197..............................................................................
198 Field Content
199 pid process id
200 tcomm filename of the executable
201 state state (R is running, S is sleeping, D is sleeping in an
202 uninterruptible wait, Z is zombie, T is traced or stopped)
203 ppid process id of the parent process
204 pgrp pgrp of the process
205 sid session id
206 tty_nr tty the process uses
207 tty_pgrp pgrp of the tty
208 flags task flags
209 min_flt number of minor faults
210 cmin_flt number of minor faults with child's
211 maj_flt number of major faults
212 cmaj_flt number of major faults with child's
213 utime user mode jiffies
214 stime kernel mode jiffies
215 cutime user mode jiffies with child's
216 cstime kernel mode jiffies with child's
217 priority priority level
218 nice nice level
219 num_threads number of threads
2e01e00e 220 it_real_value (obsolete, always 0)
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221 start_time time the process started after system boot
222 vsize virtual memory size
223 rss resident set memory size
224 rsslim current limit in bytes on the rss
225 start_code address above which program text can run
226 end_code address below which program text can run
227 start_stack address of the start of the stack
228 esp current value of ESP
229 eip current value of EIP
230 pending bitmap of pending signals (obsolete)
231 blocked bitmap of blocked signals (obsolete)
232 sigign bitmap of ignored signals (obsolete)
233 sigcatch bitmap of catched signals (obsolete)
234 wchan address where process went to sleep
235 0 (place holder)
236 0 (place holder)
237 exit_signal signal to send to parent thread on exit
238 task_cpu which CPU the task is scheduled on
239 rt_priority realtime priority
240 policy scheduling policy (man sched_setscheduler)
241 blkio_ticks time spent waiting for block IO
242..............................................................................
243
244
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2451.2 Kernel data
246---------------
247
248Similar to the process entries, the kernel data files give information about
249the running kernel. The files used to obtain this information are contained in
18d96779 250/proc and are listed in Table 1-4. Not all of these will be present in your
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251system. It depends on the kernel configuration and the loaded modules, which
252files are there, and which are missing.
253
18d96779 254Table 1-4: Kernel info in /proc
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255..............................................................................
256 File Content
257 apm Advanced power management info
258 buddyinfo Kernel memory allocator information (see text) (2.5)
259 bus Directory containing bus specific information
260 cmdline Kernel command line
261 cpuinfo Info about the CPU
262 devices Available devices (block and character)
263 dma Used DMS channels
264 filesystems Supported filesystems
265 driver Various drivers grouped here, currently rtc (2.4)
266 execdomains Execdomains, related to security (2.4)
267 fb Frame Buffer devices (2.4)
268 fs File system parameters, currently nfs/exports (2.4)
269 ide Directory containing info about the IDE subsystem
270 interrupts Interrupt usage
271 iomem Memory map (2.4)
272 ioports I/O port usage
273 irq Masks for irq to cpu affinity (2.4)(smp?)
274 isapnp ISA PnP (Plug&Play) Info (2.4)
275 kcore Kernel core image (can be ELF or A.OUT(deprecated in 2.4))
276 kmsg Kernel messages
277 ksyms Kernel symbol table
278 loadavg Load average of last 1, 5 & 15 minutes
279 locks Kernel locks
280 meminfo Memory info
281 misc Miscellaneous
282 modules List of loaded modules
283 mounts Mounted filesystems
284 net Networking info (see text)
285 partitions Table of partitions known to the system
8b60756a 286 pci Deprecated info of PCI bus (new way -> /proc/bus/pci/,
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287 decoupled by lspci (2.4)
288 rtc Real time clock
289 scsi SCSI info (see text)
290 slabinfo Slab pool info
291 stat Overall statistics
292 swaps Swap space utilization
293 sys See chapter 2
294 sysvipc Info of SysVIPC Resources (msg, sem, shm) (2.4)
295 tty Info of tty drivers
296 uptime System uptime
297 version Kernel version
298 video bttv info of video resources (2.4)
299..............................................................................
300
301You can, for example, check which interrupts are currently in use and what
302they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts:
303
304 > cat /proc/interrupts
305 CPU0
306 0: 8728810 XT-PIC timer
307 1: 895 XT-PIC keyboard
308 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
309 3: 531695 XT-PIC aha152x
310 4: 2014133 XT-PIC serial
311 5: 44401 XT-PIC pcnet_cs
312 8: 2 XT-PIC rtc
313 11: 8 XT-PIC i82365
314 12: 182918 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
315 13: 1 XT-PIC fpu
316 14: 1232265 XT-PIC ide0
317 15: 7 XT-PIC ide1
318 NMI: 0
319
320In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the
321output of a SMP machine):
322
323 > cat /proc/interrupts
324
325 CPU0 CPU1
326 0: 1243498 1214548 IO-APIC-edge timer
327 1: 8949 8958 IO-APIC-edge keyboard
328 2: 0 0 XT-PIC cascade
329 5: 11286 10161 IO-APIC-edge soundblaster
330 8: 1 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc
331 9: 27422 27407 IO-APIC-edge 3c503
332 12: 113645 113873 IO-APIC-edge PS/2 Mouse
333 13: 0 0 XT-PIC fpu
334 14: 22491 24012 IO-APIC-edge ide0
335 15: 2183 2415 IO-APIC-edge ide1
336 17: 30564 30414 IO-APIC-level eth0
337 18: 177 164 IO-APIC-level bttv
338 NMI: 2457961 2457959
339 LOC: 2457882 2457881
340 ERR: 2155
341
342NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI
343(Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.
344
345LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.
346
347ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that
348connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected,
349the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big
350problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.
351
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352In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again. This time the goal was for
353/proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not
354just those considered 'most important'. The new vectors are:
355
356 THR -- interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter
357 (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds
358 a configurable threshold. Only available on some systems.
359
360 TRM -- a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold
361 has been exceeded for the CPU. This interrupt may also be generated
362 when the temperature drops back to normal.
363
364 SPU -- a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered
365 by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC. Hence
366 the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from.
367 For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector
368 of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.
369
370 RES, CAL, TLB -- rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are
371 sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS. Typically,
372 their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to
373 determine the occurance of interrupt of the given type.
374
375The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevent. For example,
376the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms. Others are
377suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor. As of this writing, only
378i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.
379
380Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4.
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381It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity, this means that you can "hook" an
382IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the
383irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and one file; prof_cpu_mask
384
385For example
386 > ls /proc/irq/
387 0 10 12 14 16 18 2 4 6 8 prof_cpu_mask
388 1 11 13 15 17 19 3 5 7 9
389 > ls /proc/irq/0/
390 smp_affinity
391
392The contents of the prof_cpu_mask file and each smp_affinity file for each IRQ
393is the same by default:
394
395 > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity
396 ffffffff
397
c30fe7f7 398It's a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the IRQ, you can
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399set it by doing:
400
401 > echo 1 > /proc/irq/prof_cpu_mask
402
403This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo 5
c30fe7f7 404which means that only the first and fourth CPU can handle the IRQ.
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405
406The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin
407between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has
408more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the
409best choice for almost everyone.
410
411There are three more important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys.
412The general rule is that the contents, or even the existence of these
413directories, depend on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the
414directory scsi may not exist. The same is true with the net, which is there
415only when networking support is present in the running kernel.
416
417The slabinfo file gives information about memory usage at the slab level.
418Linux uses slab pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2.
419Commonly used objects have their own slab pool (such as network buffers,
420directory cache, and so on).
421
422..............................................................................
423
424> cat /proc/buddyinfo
425
426Node 0, zone DMA 0 4 5 4 4 3 ...
427Node 0, zone Normal 1 0 0 1 101 8 ...
428Node 0, zone HighMem 2 0 0 1 1 0 ...
429
430Memory fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a
431useful tool for helping diagnose these problems. Buddyinfo will give you a
432clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous
433allocation failed.
434
435Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are
436available. In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in
437ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE
438available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc...
439
440..............................................................................
441
442meminfo:
443
444Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory. This
445varies by architecture and compile options. The following is from a
44616GB PIII, which has highmem enabled. You may not have all of these fields.
447
448> cat /proc/meminfo
449
450
451MemTotal: 16344972 kB
452MemFree: 13634064 kB
453Buffers: 3656 kB
454Cached: 1195708 kB
455SwapCached: 0 kB
456Active: 891636 kB
457Inactive: 1077224 kB
458HighTotal: 15597528 kB
459HighFree: 13629632 kB
460LowTotal: 747444 kB
461LowFree: 4432 kB
462SwapTotal: 0 kB
463SwapFree: 0 kB
464Dirty: 968 kB
465Writeback: 0 kB
b88473f7 466AnonPages: 861800 kB
1da177e4 467Mapped: 280372 kB
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468Slab: 284364 kB
469SReclaimable: 159856 kB
470SUnreclaim: 124508 kB
471PageTables: 24448 kB
472NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
473Bounce: 0 kB
474WritebackTmp: 0 kB
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475CommitLimit: 7669796 kB
476Committed_AS: 100056 kB
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477VmallocTotal: 112216 kB
478VmallocUsed: 428 kB
479VmallocChunk: 111088 kB
480
481 MemTotal: Total usable ram (i.e. physical ram minus a few reserved
482 bits and the kernel binary code)
483 MemFree: The sum of LowFree+HighFree
484 Buffers: Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
485 shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
486 Cached: in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
487 pagecache). Doesn't include SwapCached
488 SwapCached: Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but
489 still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it
490 doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already
491 in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
492 Active: Memory that has been used more recently and usually not
493 reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
494 Inactive: Memory which has been less recently used. It is more
495 eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
496 HighTotal:
497 HighFree: Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory
498 Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or
499 for the pagecache. The kernel must use tricks to access
500 this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
501 LowTotal:
502 LowFree: Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that
3f6dee9b 503 highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the
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504 kernel's use for its own data structures. Among many
505 other things, it is where everything from the Slab is
506 allocated. Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
507 SwapTotal: total amount of swap space available
508 SwapFree: Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily
509 on the disk
510 Dirty: Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
511 Writeback: Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
b88473f7 512 AnonPages: Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables
1da177e4 513 Mapped: files which have been mmaped, such as libraries
e82443c0 514 Slab: in-kernel data structures cache
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515SReclaimable: Part of Slab, that might be reclaimed, such as caches
516 SUnreclaim: Part of Slab, that cannot be reclaimed on memory pressure
517 PageTables: amount of memory dedicated to the lowest level of page
518 tables.
519NFS_Unstable: NFS pages sent to the server, but not yet committed to stable
520 storage
521 Bounce: Memory used for block device "bounce buffers"
522WritebackTmp: Memory used by FUSE for temporary writeback buffers
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523 CommitLimit: Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'),
524 this is the total amount of memory currently available to
525 be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to
526 if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in
527 'vm.overcommit_memory').
528 The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula:
529 CommitLimit = ('vm.overcommit_ratio' * Physical RAM) + Swap
530 For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G
531 of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would
532 yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
533 For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation
534 in vm/overcommit-accounting.
535Committed_AS: The amount of memory presently allocated on the system.
536 The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which
537 has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been
538 "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G
539 of memory, but only touches 300M of it will only show up
540 as using 300M of memory even if it has the address space
541 allocated for the entire 1G. This 1G is memory which has
542 been "committed" to by the VM and can be used at any time
543 by the allocating application. With strict overcommit
544 enabled on the system (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'),
545 allocations which would exceed the CommitLimit (detailed
546 above) will not be permitted. This is useful if one needs
547 to guarantee that processes will not fail due to lack of
548 memory once that memory has been successfully allocated.
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549VmallocTotal: total size of vmalloc memory area
550 VmallocUsed: amount of vmalloc area which is used
551VmallocChunk: largest contigious block of vmalloc area which is free
552
553
5541.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
555----------------------------
556
557The subdirectory /proc/ide contains information about all IDE devices of which
558the kernel is aware. There is one subdirectory for each IDE controller, the
559file drivers and a link for each IDE device, pointing to the device directory
560in the controller specific subtree.
561
562The file drivers contains general information about the drivers used for the
563IDE devices:
564
565 > cat /proc/ide/drivers
566 ide-cdrom version 4.53
567 ide-disk version 1.08
568
569More detailed information can be found in the controller specific
570subdirectories. These are named ide0, ide1 and so on. Each of these
18d96779 571directories contains the files shown in table 1-5.
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572
573
18d96779 574Table 1-5: IDE controller info in /proc/ide/ide?
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575..............................................................................
576 File Content
577 channel IDE channel (0 or 1)
578 config Configuration (only for PCI/IDE bridge)
579 mate Mate name
580 model Type/Chipset of IDE controller
581..............................................................................
582
583Each device connected to a controller has a separate subdirectory in the
18d96779 584controllers directory. The files listed in table 1-6 are contained in these
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585directories.
586
587
18d96779 588Table 1-6: IDE device information
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589..............................................................................
590 File Content
591 cache The cache
592 capacity Capacity of the medium (in 512Byte blocks)
593 driver driver and version
594 geometry physical and logical geometry
595 identify device identify block
596 media media type
597 model device identifier
598 settings device setup
599 smart_thresholds IDE disk management thresholds
600 smart_values IDE disk management values
601..............................................................................
602
603The most interesting file is settings. This file contains a nice overview of
604the drive parameters:
605
606 # cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings
607 name value min max mode
608 ---- ----- --- --- ----
609 bios_cyl 526 0 65535 rw
610 bios_head 255 0 255 rw
611 bios_sect 63 0 63 rw
612 breada_readahead 4 0 127 rw
613 bswap 0 0 1 r
614 file_readahead 72 0 2097151 rw
615 io_32bit 0 0 3 rw
616 keepsettings 0 0 1 rw
617 max_kb_per_request 122 1 127 rw
618 multcount 0 0 8 rw
619 nice1 1 0 1 rw
620 nowerr 0 0 1 rw
621 pio_mode write-only 0 255 w
622 slow 0 0 1 rw
623 unmaskirq 0 0 1 rw
624 using_dma 0 0 1 rw
625
626
6271.4 Networking info in /proc/net
628--------------------------------
629
630The subdirectory /proc/net follows the usual pattern. Table 1-6 shows the
631additional values you get for IP version 6 if you configure the kernel to
632support this. Table 1-7 lists the files and their meaning.
633
634
635Table 1-6: IPv6 info in /proc/net
636..............................................................................
637 File Content
638 udp6 UDP sockets (IPv6)
639 tcp6 TCP sockets (IPv6)
640 raw6 Raw device statistics (IPv6)
641 igmp6 IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6)
642 if_inet6 List of IPv6 interface addresses
643 ipv6_route Kernel routing table for IPv6
644 rt6_stats Global IPv6 routing tables statistics
645 sockstat6 Socket statistics (IPv6)
646 snmp6 Snmp data (IPv6)
647..............................................................................
648
649
650Table 1-7: Network info in /proc/net
651..............................................................................
652 File Content
653 arp Kernel ARP table
654 dev network devices with statistics
655 dev_mcast the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too
656 (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound
657 addresses).
658 dev_stat network device status
659 ip_fwchains Firewall chain linkage
660 ip_fwnames Firewall chain names
661 ip_masq Directory containing the masquerading tables
662 ip_masquerade Major masquerading table
663 netstat Network statistics
664 raw raw device statistics
665 route Kernel routing table
666 rpc Directory containing rpc info
667 rt_cache Routing cache
668 snmp SNMP data
669 sockstat Socket statistics
670 tcp TCP sockets
671 tr_rif Token ring RIF routing table
672 udp UDP sockets
673 unix UNIX domain sockets
674 wireless Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc)
675 igmp IP multicast addresses, which this host joined
676 psched Global packet scheduler parameters.
677 netlink List of PF_NETLINK sockets
678 ip_mr_vifs List of multicast virtual interfaces
679 ip_mr_cache List of multicast routing cache
680..............................................................................
681
682You can use this information to see which network devices are available in
683your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices:
684
685 > cat /proc/net/dev
686 Inter-|Receive |[...
687 face |bytes packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[...
688 lo: 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0 [...
689 ppp0:15475140 20721 410 0 0 410 0 0 [...
690 eth0: 614530 7085 0 0 0 0 0 1 [...
691
692 ...] Transmit
693 ...] bytes packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
694 ...] 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0
695 ...] 1375103 17405 0 0 0 0 0 0
696 ...] 1703981 5535 0 0 0 3 0 0
697
698In addition, each Channel Bond interface has it's own directory. For
699example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/.
700It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the
701current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how
702many times the slaves link has failed.
703
7041.5 SCSI info
705-------------
706
707If you have a SCSI host adapter in your system, you'll find a subdirectory
708named after the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi. You'll also see a list
709of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi:
710
711 >cat /proc/scsi/scsi
712 Attached devices:
713 Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
714 Vendor: IBM Model: DGHS09U Rev: 03E0
715 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
716 Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
717 Vendor: PIONEER Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S Rev: 1.04
718 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
719
720
721The directory named after the driver has one file for each adapter found in
722the system. These files contain information about the controller, including
723the used IRQ and the IO address range. The amount of information shown is
724dependent on the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec
725AHA-2940 SCSI adapter:
726
727 > cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0
728
729 Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4
730 Compile Options:
731 TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled
732 AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS : Disabled
733 AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY : 5
734 Adapter Configuration:
735 SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter
736 Ultra Wide Controller
737 PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000
738 Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used.
739 Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled
740 IRQ: 10
741 SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2,
742 Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255
743 Interrupts: 160328
744 BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6
745 Adapter Control Word: 0x005b
746 Extended Translation: Enabled
747 Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff
748 Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001
749 Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000
750 Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000
751 Default Tag Queue Depth: 8
752 Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0:
753 {255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255}
754 Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0:
755 {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
756 Statistics:
757 (scsi0:0:0:0)
758 Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8
759 Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0)
760 Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes)
761 (scsi0:0:6:0)
762 Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15
763 Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0)
764 Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes)
765
766
7671.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
768---------------------------------------
769
770The directory /proc/parport contains information about the parallel ports of
771your system. It has one subdirectory for each port, named after the port
772number (0,1,2,...).
773
774These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-8.
775
776
777Table 1-8: Files in /proc/parport
778..............................................................................
779 File Content
780 autoprobe Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired.
781 devices list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the
782 name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear
783 against any).
784 hardware Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel.
785 irq IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate
786 file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ
787 number or none).
788..............................................................................
789
7901.7 TTY info in /proc/tty
791-------------------------
792
793Information about the available and actually used tty's can be found in the
794directory /proc/tty.You'll find entries for drivers and line disciplines in
795this directory, as shown in Table 1-9.
796
797
798Table 1-9: Files in /proc/tty
799..............................................................................
800 File Content
801 drivers list of drivers and their usage
802 ldiscs registered line disciplines
803 driver/serial usage statistic and status of single tty lines
804..............................................................................
805
806To see which tty's are currently in use, you can simply look into the file
807/proc/tty/drivers:
808
809 > cat /proc/tty/drivers
810 pty_slave /dev/pts 136 0-255 pty:slave
811 pty_master /dev/ptm 128 0-255 pty:master
812 pty_slave /dev/ttyp 3 0-255 pty:slave
813 pty_master /dev/pty 2 0-255 pty:master
814 serial /dev/cua 5 64-67 serial:callout
815 serial /dev/ttyS 4 64-67 serial
816 /dev/tty0 /dev/tty0 4 0 system:vtmaster
817 /dev/ptmx /dev/ptmx 5 2 system
818 /dev/console /dev/console 5 1 system:console
819 /dev/tty /dev/tty 5 0 system:/dev/tty
820 unknown /dev/tty 4 1-63 console
821
822
8231.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
824-------------------------------------------------
825
826Various pieces of information about kernel activity are available in the
827/proc/stat file. All of the numbers reported in this file are aggregates
828since the system first booted. For a quick look, simply cat the file:
829
830 > cat /proc/stat
b68f2c3a
LC
831 cpu 2255 34 2290 22625563 6290 127 456 0
832 cpu0 1132 34 1441 11311718 3675 127 438 0
833 cpu1 1123 0 849 11313845 2614 0 18 0
1da177e4
LT
834 intr 114930548 113199788 3 0 5 263 0 4 [... lots more numbers ...]
835 ctxt 1990473
836 btime 1062191376
837 processes 2915
838 procs_running 1
839 procs_blocked 0
840
841The very first "cpu" line aggregates the numbers in all of the other "cpuN"
842lines. These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing
843different kinds of work. Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a
844second). The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
845
846- user: normal processes executing in user mode
847- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
848- system: processes executing in kernel mode
849- idle: twiddling thumbs
850- iowait: waiting for I/O to complete
851- irq: servicing interrupts
852- softirq: servicing softirqs
b68f2c3a 853- steal: involuntary wait
1da177e4
LT
854
855The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts serviced since boot time, for each
856of the possible system interrupts. The first column is the total of all
857interrupts serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular
858interrupt.
859
860The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.
861
862The "btime" line gives the time at which the system booted, in seconds since
863the Unix epoch.
864
865The "processes" line gives the number of processes and threads created, which
866includes (but is not limited to) those created by calls to the fork() and
867clone() system calls.
868
869The "procs_running" line gives the number of processes currently running on
870CPUs.
871
872The "procs_blocked" line gives the number of processes currently blocked,
873waiting for I/O to complete.
874
c9de560d
AT
8751.9 Ext4 file system parameters
876------------------------------
877Ext4 file system have one directory per partition under /proc/fs/ext4/
878# ls /proc/fs/ext4/hdc/
879group_prealloc max_to_scan mb_groups mb_history min_to_scan order2_req
880stats stream_req
881
882mb_groups:
883This file gives the details of mutiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks
884
885mb_history:
886Multiblock allocation history.
887
888stats:
889This file indicate whether the multiblock allocator should start collecting
890statistics. The statistics are shown during unmount
891
892group_prealloc:
893The multiblock allocator normalize the block allocation request to
894group_prealloc filesystem blocks if we don't have strip value set.
895The stripe value can be specified at mount time or during mke2fs.
896
897max_to_scan:
898How long multiblock allocator can look for a best extent (in found extents)
899
900min_to_scan:
901How long multiblock allocator must look for a best extent
902
903order2_req:
904Multiblock allocator use 2^N search using buddies only for requests greater
905than or equal to order2_req. The request size is specfied in file system
906blocks. A value of 2 indicate only if the requests are greater than or equal
907to 4 blocks.
908
909stream_req:
910Files smaller than stream_req are served by the stream allocator, whose
911purpose is to pack requests as close each to other as possible to
912produce smooth I/O traffic. Avalue of 16 indicate that file smaller than 16
913filesystem block size will use group based preallocation.
1da177e4
LT
914
915------------------------------------------------------------------------------
916Summary
917------------------------------------------------------------------------------
918The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only
919allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status
920by reading files in the hierarchy.
921
922The directory structure of /proc reflects the types of information and makes
923it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data.
924------------------------------------------------------------------------------
925
926------------------------------------------------------------------------------
927CHAPTER 2: MODIFYING SYSTEM PARAMETERS
928------------------------------------------------------------------------------
929
930------------------------------------------------------------------------------
931In This Chapter
932------------------------------------------------------------------------------
933* Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys
934* Exploring the files which modify certain parameters
935* Review of the /proc/sys file tree
936------------------------------------------------------------------------------
937
938
939A very interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only
940a source of information, it also allows you to change parameters within the
941kernel. Be very careful when attempting this. You can optimize your system,
942but you can also cause it to crash. Never alter kernel parameters on a
943production system. Set up a development machine and test to make sure that
944everything works the way you want it to. You may have no alternative but to
945reboot the machine once an error has been made.
946
947To change a value, simply echo the new value into the file. An example is
948given below in the section on the file system data. You need to be root to do
949this. You can create your own boot script to perform this every time your
950system boots.
951
952The files in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and
953general things in the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files
954can inadvertently disrupt your system, it is advisable to read both
955documentation and source before actually making adjustments. In any case, be
956very careful when writing to any of these files. The entries in /proc may
957change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt
958review the kernel documentation in the directory /usr/src/linux/Documentation.
959This chapter is heavily based on the documentation included in the pre 2.2
960kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel.
961
9622.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data
963-----------------------------------
964
965This subdirectory contains specific file system, file handle, inode, dentry
966and quota information.
967
968Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/fs:
969
970dentry-state
971------------
972
973Status of the directory cache. Since directory entries are dynamically
974allocated and deallocated, this file indicates the current status. It holds
975six values, in which the last two are not used and are always zero. The others
976are listed in table 2-1.
977
978
979Table 2-1: Status files of the directory cache
980..............................................................................
981 File Content
982 nr_dentry Almost always zero
983 nr_unused Number of unused cache entries
984 age_limit
985 in seconds after the entry may be reclaimed, when memory is short
986 want_pages internally
987..............................................................................
988
989dquot-nr and dquot-max
990----------------------
991
992The file dquot-max shows the maximum number of cached disk quota entries.
993
994The file dquot-nr shows the number of allocated disk quota entries and the
995number of free disk quota entries.
996
997If the number of available cached disk quotas is very low and you have a large
998number of simultaneous system users, you might want to raise the limit.
999
1000file-nr and file-max
1001--------------------
1002
1003The kernel allocates file handles dynamically, but doesn't free them again at
1004this time.
1005
1006The value in file-max denotes the maximum number of file handles that the
1007Linux kernel will allocate. When you get a lot of error messages about running
1008out of file handles, you might want to raise this limit. The default value is
100910% of RAM in kilobytes. To change it, just write the new number into the
1010file:
1011
1012 # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1013 4096
1014 # echo 8192 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1015 # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1016 8192
1017
1018
1019This method of revision is useful for all customizable parameters of the
1020kernel - simply echo the new value to the corresponding file.
1021
1022Historically, the three values in file-nr denoted the number of allocated file
1023handles, the number of allocated but unused file handles, and the maximum
1024number of file handles. Linux 2.6 always reports 0 as the number of free file
1025handles -- this is not an error, it just means that the number of allocated
1026file handles exactly matches the number of used file handles.
1027
1028Attempts to allocate more file descriptors than file-max are reported with
1029printk, look for "VFS: file-max limit <number> reached".
1030
1031inode-state and inode-nr
1032------------------------
1033
1034The file inode-nr contains the first two items from inode-state, so we'll skip
1035to that file...
1036
1037inode-state contains two actual numbers and five dummy values. The numbers
1038are nr_inodes and nr_free_inodes (in order of appearance).
1039
1040nr_inodes
1041~~~~~~~~~
1042
1043Denotes the number of inodes the system has allocated. This number will
1044grow and shrink dynamically.
1045
9cfe015a
ED
1046nr_open
1047-------
1048
1049Denotes the maximum number of file-handles a process can
1050allocate. Default value is 1024*1024 (1048576) which should be
1051enough for most machines. Actual limit depends on RLIMIT_NOFILE
1052resource limit.
1053
1da177e4
LT
1054nr_free_inodes
1055--------------
1056
1057Represents the number of free inodes. Ie. The number of inuse inodes is
1058(nr_inodes - nr_free_inodes).
1059
1da177e4
LT
1060aio-nr and aio-max-nr
1061---------------------
1062
1063aio-nr is the running total of the number of events specified on the
1064io_setup system call for all currently active aio contexts. If aio-nr
1065reaches aio-max-nr then io_setup will fail with EAGAIN. Note that
1066raising aio-max-nr does not result in the pre-allocation or re-sizing
1067of any kernel data structures.
1068
10692.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
1070-----------------------------------------------------------
1071
1072Besides these files, there is the subdirectory /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc. This
1073handles the kernel support for miscellaneous binary formats.
1074
1075Binfmt_misc provides the ability to register additional binary formats to the
1076Kernel without compiling an additional module/kernel. Therefore, binfmt_misc
1077needs to know magic numbers at the beginning or the filename extension of the
1078binary.
1079
1080It works by maintaining a linked list of structs that contain a description of
1081a binary format, including a magic with size (or the filename extension),
1082offset and mask, and the interpreter name. On request it invokes the given
1083interpreter with the original program as argument, as binfmt_java and
1084binfmt_em86 and binfmt_mz do. Since binfmt_misc does not define any default
1085binary-formats, you have to register an additional binary-format.
1086
1087There are two general files in binfmt_misc and one file per registered format.
1088The two general files are register and status.
1089
1090Registering a new binary format
1091-------------------------------
1092
1093To register a new binary format you have to issue the command
1094
1095 echo :name:type:offset:magic:mask:interpreter: > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
1096
1097
1098
1099with appropriate name (the name for the /proc-dir entry), offset (defaults to
11000, if omitted), magic, mask (which can be omitted, defaults to all 0xff) and
1101last but not least, the interpreter that is to be invoked (for example and
1102testing /bin/echo). Type can be M for usual magic matching or E for filename
1103extension matching (give extension in place of magic).
1104
1105Check or reset the status of the binary format handler
1106------------------------------------------------------
1107
1108If you do a cat on the file /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/status, you will get the
1109current status (enabled/disabled) of binfmt_misc. Change the status by echoing
11100 (disables) or 1 (enables) or -1 (caution: this clears all previously
1111registered binary formats) to status. For example echo 0 > status to disable
1112binfmt_misc (temporarily).
1113
1114Status of a single handler
1115--------------------------
1116
1117Each registered handler has an entry in /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc. These files
1118perform the same function as status, but their scope is limited to the actual
1119binary format. By cating this file, you also receive all related information
1120about the interpreter/magic of the binfmt.
1121
1122Example usage of binfmt_misc (emulate binfmt_java)
1123--------------------------------------------------
1124
1125 cd /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
1126 echo ':Java:M::\xca\xfe\xba\xbe::/usr/local/java/bin/javawrapper:' > register
1127 echo ':HTML:E::html::/usr/local/java/bin/appletviewer:' > register
1128 echo ':Applet:M::<!--applet::/usr/local/java/bin/appletviewer:' > register
1129 echo ':DEXE:M::\x0eDEX::/usr/bin/dosexec:' > register
1130
1131
1132These four lines add support for Java executables and Java applets (like
1133binfmt_java, additionally recognizing the .html extension with no need to put
1134<!--applet> to every applet file). You have to install the JDK and the
1135shell-script /usr/local/java/bin/javawrapper too. It works around the
1136brokenness of the Java filename handling. To add a Java binary, just create a
1137link to the class-file somewhere in the path.
1138
11392.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
1140------------------------------------------------
1141
1142This directory reflects general kernel behaviors. As I've said before, the
1143contents depend on your configuration. Here you'll find the most important
1144files, along with descriptions of what they mean and how to use them.
1145
1146acct
1147----
1148
1149The file contains three values; highwater, lowwater, and frequency.
1150
1151It exists only when BSD-style process accounting is enabled. These values
1152control its behavior. If the free space on the file system where the log lives
1153goes below lowwater percentage, accounting suspends. If it goes above
1154highwater percentage, accounting resumes. Frequency determines how often you
1155check the amount of free space (value is in seconds). Default settings are: 4,
11562, and 30. That is, suspend accounting if there is less than 2 percent free;
1157resume it if we have a value of 3 or more percent; consider information about
1158the amount of free space valid for 30 seconds
1159
1160ctrl-alt-del
1161------------
1162
1163When the value in this file is 0, ctrl-alt-del is trapped and sent to the init
1164program to handle a graceful restart. However, when the value is greater that
1165zero, Linux's reaction to this key combination will be an immediate reboot,
1166without syncing its dirty buffers.
1167
1168[NOTE]
1169 When a program (like dosemu) has the keyboard in raw mode, the
1170 ctrl-alt-del is intercepted by the program before it ever reaches the
1171 kernel tty layer, and it is up to the program to decide what to do with
1172 it.
1173
1174domainname and hostname
1175-----------------------
1176
1177These files can be controlled to set the NIS domainname and hostname of your
1178box. For the classic darkstar.frop.org a simple:
1179
1180 # echo "darkstar" > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname
1181 # echo "frop.org" > /proc/sys/kernel/domainname
1182
1183
1184would suffice to set your hostname and NIS domainname.
1185
1186osrelease, ostype and version
1187-----------------------------
1188
1189The names make it pretty obvious what these fields contain:
1190
1191 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease
1192 2.2.12
1193
1194 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/ostype
1195 Linux
1196
1197 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/version
1198 #4 Fri Oct 1 12:41:14 PDT 1999
1199
1200
1201The files osrelease and ostype should be clear enough. Version needs a little
1202more clarification. The #4 means that this is the 4th kernel built from this
1203source base and the date after it indicates the time the kernel was built. The
1204only way to tune these values is to rebuild the kernel.
1205
1206panic
1207-----
1208
1209The value in this file represents the number of seconds the kernel waits
1210before rebooting on a panic. When you use the software watchdog, the
1211recommended setting is 60. If set to 0, the auto reboot after a kernel panic
1212is disabled, which is the default setting.
1213
1214printk
1215------
1216
1217The four values in printk denote
1218* console_loglevel,
1219* default_message_loglevel,
1220* minimum_console_loglevel and
1221* default_console_loglevel
1222respectively.
1223
1224These values influence printk() behavior when printing or logging error
1225messages, which come from inside the kernel. See syslog(2) for more
1226information on the different log levels.
1227
1228console_loglevel
1229----------------
1230
1231Messages with a higher priority than this will be printed to the console.
1232
1233default_message_level
1234---------------------
1235
1236Messages without an explicit priority will be printed with this priority.
1237
1238minimum_console_loglevel
1239------------------------
1240
1241Minimum (highest) value to which the console_loglevel can be set.
1242
1243default_console_loglevel
1244------------------------
1245
1246Default value for console_loglevel.
1247
1248sg-big-buff
1249-----------
1250
1251This file shows the size of the generic SCSI (sg) buffer. At this point, you
1252can't tune it yet, but you can change it at compile time by editing
1253include/scsi/sg.h and changing the value of SG_BIG_BUFF.
1254
1255If you use a scanner with SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) you might want to set
1256this to a higher value. Refer to the SANE documentation on this issue.
1257
1258modprobe
1259--------
1260
1261The location where the modprobe binary is located. The kernel uses this
1262program to load modules on demand.
1263
1264unknown_nmi_panic
1265-----------------
1266
1267The value in this file affects behavior of handling NMI. When the value is
1268non-zero, unknown NMI is trapped and then panic occurs. At that time, kernel
1269debugging information is displayed on console.
1270
1271NMI switch that most IA32 servers have fires unknown NMI up, for example.
1272If a system hangs up, try pressing the NMI switch.
1273
e33e89ab
DZ
1274nmi_watchdog
1275------------
1276
1277Enables/Disables the NMI watchdog on x86 systems. When the value is non-zero
1278the NMI watchdog is enabled and will continuously test all online cpus to
1279determine whether or not they are still functioning properly.
1280
1281Because the NMI watchdog shares registers with oprofile, by disabling the NMI
1282watchdog, oprofile may have more registers to utilize.
1da177e4 1283
5096add8
KC
1284maps_protect
1285------------
1286
1287Enables/Disables the protection of the per-process proc entries "maps" and
1288"smaps". When enabled, the contents of these files are visible only to
1289readers that are allowed to ptrace() the given process.
1290
1da177e4
LT
1291
12922.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem
1293-----------------------------------------------
1294
1295The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation of the virtual
1296memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel.
1297
1298vfs_cache_pressure
1299------------------
1300
1301Controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for
1302caching of directory and inode objects.
1303
1304At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to
1305reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and
1306swapcache reclaim. Decreasing vfs_cache_pressure causes the kernel to prefer
1307to retain dentry and inode caches. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100
1308causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes.
1309
1310dirty_background_ratio
1311----------------------
1312
1313Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which
1314the pdflush background writeback daemon will start writing out dirty data.
1315
1316dirty_ratio
1317-----------------
1318
1319Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which
1320a process which is generating disk writes will itself start writing out dirty
1321data.
1322
1323dirty_writeback_centisecs
1324-------------------------
1325
1326The pdflush writeback daemons will periodically wake up and write `old' data
1327out to disk. This tunable expresses the interval between those wakeups, in
1328100'ths of a second.
1329
1330Setting this to zero disables periodic writeback altogether.
1331
1332dirty_expire_centisecs
1333----------------------
1334
1335This tunable is used to define when dirty data is old enough to be eligible
1336for writeout by the pdflush daemons. It is expressed in 100'ths of a second.
1337Data which has been dirty in-memory for longer than this interval will be
1338written out next time a pdflush daemon wakes up.
1339
195cf453
BG
1340highmem_is_dirtyable
1341--------------------
1342
1343Only present if CONFIG_HIGHMEM is set.
1344
1345This defaults to 0 (false), meaning that the ratios set above are calculated
1346as a percentage of lowmem only. This protects against excessive scanning
1347in page reclaim, swapping and general VM distress.
1348
1349Setting this to 1 can be useful on 32 bit machines where you want to make
1350random changes within an MMAPed file that is larger than your available
1351lowmem without causing large quantities of random IO. Is is safe if the
1352behavior of all programs running on the machine is known and memory will
1353not be otherwise stressed.
1354
1da177e4
LT
1355legacy_va_layout
1356----------------
1357
1358If non-zero, this sysctl disables the new 32-bit mmap mmap layout - the kernel
1359will use the legacy (2.4) layout for all processes.
1360
7786fa9a 1361lowmem_reserve_ratio
1da177e4
LT
1362---------------------
1363
1364For some specialised workloads on highmem machines it is dangerous for
1365the kernel to allow process memory to be allocated from the "lowmem"
1366zone. This is because that memory could then be pinned via the mlock()
1367system call, or by unavailability of swapspace.
1368
1369And on large highmem machines this lack of reclaimable lowmem memory
1370can be fatal.
1371
1372So the Linux page allocator has a mechanism which prevents allocations
1373which _could_ use highmem from using too much lowmem. This means that
1374a certain amount of lowmem is defended from the possibility of being
1375captured into pinned user memory.
1376
1377(The same argument applies to the old 16 megabyte ISA DMA region. This
1378mechanism will also defend that region from allocations which could use
1379highmem or lowmem).
1380
7786fa9a
YG
1381The `lowmem_reserve_ratio' tunable determines how aggressive the kernel is
1382in defending these lower zones.
1da177e4
LT
1383
1384If you have a machine which uses highmem or ISA DMA and your
1385applications are using mlock(), or if you are running with no swap then
7786fa9a
YG
1386you probably should change the lowmem_reserve_ratio setting.
1387
1388The lowmem_reserve_ratio is an array. You can see them by reading this file.
1389-
1390% cat /proc/sys/vm/lowmem_reserve_ratio
1391256 256 32
1392-
1393Note: # of this elements is one fewer than number of zones. Because the highest
1394 zone's value is not necessary for following calculation.
1395
1396But, these values are not used directly. The kernel calculates # of protection
1397pages for each zones from them. These are shown as array of protection pages
1398in /proc/zoneinfo like followings. (This is an example of x86-64 box).
1399Each zone has an array of protection pages like this.
1400
1401-
1402Node 0, zone DMA
1403 pages free 1355
1404 min 3
1405 low 3
1406 high 4
1407 :
1408 :
1409 numa_other 0
1410 protection: (0, 2004, 2004, 2004)
1411 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1412 pagesets
1413 cpu: 0 pcp: 0
1414 :
1415-
1416These protections are added to score to judge whether this zone should be used
1417for page allocation or should be reclaimed.
1418
1419In this example, if normal pages (index=2) are required to this DMA zone and
1420pages_high is used for watermark, the kernel judges this zone should not be
1421used because pages_free(1355) is smaller than watermark + protection[2]
1422(4 + 2004 = 2008). If this protection value is 0, this zone would be used for
1423normal page requirement. If requirement is DMA zone(index=0), protection[0]
1424(=0) is used.
1425
1426zone[i]'s protection[j] is calculated by following exprssion.
1427
1428(i < j):
1429 zone[i]->protection[j]
1430 = (total sums of present_pages from zone[i+1] to zone[j] on the node)
1431 / lowmem_reserve_ratio[i];
1432(i = j):
1433 (should not be protected. = 0;
1434(i > j):
1435 (not necessary, but looks 0)
1436
1437The default values of lowmem_reserve_ratio[i] are
1438 256 (if zone[i] means DMA or DMA32 zone)
1439 32 (others).
1440As above expression, they are reciprocal number of ratio.
1441256 means 1/256. # of protection pages becomes about "0.39%" of total present
1442pages of higher zones on the node.
1443
1444If you would like to protect more pages, smaller values are effective.
1445The minimum value is 1 (1/1 -> 100%).
1da177e4
LT
1446
1447page-cluster
1448------------
1449
1450page-cluster controls the number of pages which are written to swap in
1451a single attempt. The swap I/O size.
1452
1453It is a logarithmic value - setting it to zero means "1 page", setting
1454it to 1 means "2 pages", setting it to 2 means "4 pages", etc.
1455
1456The default value is three (eight pages at a time). There may be some
1457small benefits in tuning this to a different value if your workload is
1458swap-intensive.
1459
1460overcommit_memory
1461-----------------
1462
af97c722
CE
1463Controls overcommit of system memory, possibly allowing processes
1464to allocate (but not use) more memory than is actually available.
1465
1466
14670 - Heuristic overcommit handling. Obvious overcommits of
1468 address space are refused. Used for a typical system. It
1469 ensures a seriously wild allocation fails while allowing
1470 overcommit to reduce swap usage. root is allowed to
53cb4726 1471 allocate slightly more memory in this mode. This is the
af97c722
CE
1472 default.
1473
14741 - Always overcommit. Appropriate for some scientific
1475 applications.
1476
14772 - Don't overcommit. The total address space commit
1478 for the system is not permitted to exceed swap plus a
1479 configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM.
1480 Depending on the percentage you use, in most situations
1481 this means a process will not be killed while attempting
1482 to use already-allocated memory but will receive errors
1483 on memory allocation as appropriate.
1484
1485overcommit_ratio
1486----------------
1487
1488Percentage of physical memory size to include in overcommit calculations
1489(see above.)
1490
1491Memory allocation limit = swapspace + physmem * (overcommit_ratio / 100)
1492
1493 swapspace = total size of all swap areas
1494 physmem = size of physical memory in system
1da177e4
LT
1495
1496nr_hugepages and hugetlb_shm_group
1497----------------------------------
1498
1499nr_hugepages configures number of hugetlb page reserved for the system.
1500
1501hugetlb_shm_group contains group id that is allowed to create SysV shared
1502memory segment using hugetlb page.
1503
ed7ed365
MG
1504hugepages_treat_as_movable
1505--------------------------
1506
1507This parameter is only useful when kernelcore= is specified at boot time to
1508create ZONE_MOVABLE for pages that may be reclaimed or migrated. Huge pages
1509are not movable so are not normally allocated from ZONE_MOVABLE. A non-zero
1510value written to hugepages_treat_as_movable allows huge pages to be allocated
1511from ZONE_MOVABLE.
1512
1513Once enabled, the ZONE_MOVABLE is treated as an area of memory the huge
1514pages pool can easily grow or shrink within. Assuming that applications are
1515not running that mlock() a lot of memory, it is likely the huge pages pool
1516can grow to the size of ZONE_MOVABLE by repeatedly entering the desired value
1517into nr_hugepages and triggering page reclaim.
1518
1da177e4
LT
1519laptop_mode
1520-----------
1521
1522laptop_mode is a knob that controls "laptop mode". All the things that are
a09a20b5 1523controlled by this knob are discussed in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
1da177e4
LT
1524
1525block_dump
1526----------
1527
1528block_dump enables block I/O debugging when set to a nonzero value. More
a09a20b5 1529information on block I/O debugging is in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
1da177e4
LT
1530
1531swap_token_timeout
1532------------------
1533
1534This file contains valid hold time of swap out protection token. The Linux
1535VM has token based thrashing control mechanism and uses the token to prevent
1536unnecessary page faults in thrashing situation. The unit of the value is
1537second. The value would be useful to tune thrashing behavior.
1538
9d0243bc
AM
1539drop_caches
1540-----------
1541
1542Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, dentries and
1543inodes from memory, causing that memory to become free.
1544
1545To free pagecache:
1546 echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1547To free dentries and inodes:
1548 echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1549To free pagecache, dentries and inodes:
1550 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1551
1552As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the
1553user should run `sync' first.
1554
1555
1da177e4
LT
15562.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
1557----------------------------------------------
1558
1559Currently there is only support for CDROM drives, and for those, there is only
1560one read-only file containing information about the CD-ROM drives attached to
1561the system:
1562
1563 >cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info
1564 CD-ROM information, Id: cdrom.c 2.55 1999/04/25
1565
1566 drive name: sr0 hdb
1567 drive speed: 32 40
1568 drive # of slots: 1 0
1569 Can close tray: 1 1
1570 Can open tray: 1 1
1571 Can lock tray: 1 1
1572 Can change speed: 1 1
1573 Can select disk: 0 1
1574 Can read multisession: 1 1
1575 Can read MCN: 1 1
1576 Reports media changed: 1 1
1577 Can play audio: 1 1
1578
1579
1580You see two drives, sr0 and hdb, along with a list of their features.
1581
15822.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
1583---------------------------------------------
1584
1585This directory contains four files, which enable or disable debugging for the
1586RPC functions NFS, NFS-daemon, RPC and NLM. The default values are 0. They can
1587be set to one to turn debugging on. (The default value is 0 for each)
1588
15892.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
1590------------------------------------
1591
1592The interface to the networking parts of the kernel is located in
1593/proc/sys/net. Table 2-3 shows all possible subdirectories. You may see only
1594some of them, depending on your kernel's configuration.
1595
1596
1597Table 2-3: Subdirectories in /proc/sys/net
1598..............................................................................
1599 Directory Content Directory Content
1600 core General parameter appletalk Appletalk protocol
1601 unix Unix domain sockets netrom NET/ROM
1602 802 E802 protocol ax25 AX25
1603 ethernet Ethernet protocol rose X.25 PLP layer
1604 ipv4 IP version 4 x25 X.25 protocol
1605 ipx IPX token-ring IBM token ring
1606 bridge Bridging decnet DEC net
1607 ipv6 IP version 6
1608..............................................................................
1609
1610We will concentrate on IP networking here. Since AX15, X.25, and DEC Net are
1611only minor players in the Linux world, we'll skip them in this chapter. You'll
1612find some short info on Appletalk and IPX further on in this chapter. Review
1613the online documentation and the kernel source to get a detailed view of the
1614parameters for those protocols. In this section we'll discuss the
1615subdirectories printed in bold letters in the table above. As default values
1616are suitable for most needs, there is no need to change these values.
1617
1618/proc/sys/net/core - Network core options
1619-----------------------------------------
1620
1621rmem_default
1622------------
1623
1624The default setting of the socket receive buffer in bytes.
1625
1626rmem_max
1627--------
1628
1629The maximum receive socket buffer size in bytes.
1630
1631wmem_default
1632------------
1633
1634The default setting (in bytes) of the socket send buffer.
1635
1636wmem_max
1637--------
1638
1639The maximum send socket buffer size in bytes.
1640
1641message_burst and message_cost
1642------------------------------
1643
1644These parameters are used to limit the warning messages written to the kernel
1645log from the networking code. They enforce a rate limit to make a
1646denial-of-service attack impossible. A higher message_cost factor, results in
1647fewer messages that will be written. Message_burst controls when messages will
1648be dropped. The default settings limit warning messages to one every five
1649seconds.
1650
a2a316fd
SH
1651warnings
1652--------
1653
1654This controls console messages from the networking stack that can occur because
1655of problems on the network like duplicate address or bad checksums. Normally,
1656this should be enabled, but if the problem persists the messages can be
1657disabled.
1658
1659
1da177e4
LT
1660netdev_max_backlog
1661------------------
1662
1663Maximum number of packets, queued on the INPUT side, when the interface
1664receives packets faster than kernel can process them.
1665
1666optmem_max
1667----------
1668
1669Maximum ancillary buffer size allowed per socket. Ancillary data is a sequence
1670of struct cmsghdr structures with appended data.
1671
1672/proc/sys/net/unix - Parameters for Unix domain sockets
1673-------------------------------------------------------
1674
1675There are only two files in this subdirectory. They control the delays for
1676deleting and destroying socket descriptors.
1677
16782.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
1679--------------------------------------
1680
1681IP version 4 is still the most used protocol in Unix networking. It will be
1682replaced by IP version 6 in the next couple of years, but for the moment it's
1683the de facto standard for the internet and is used in most networking
1684environments around the world. Because of the importance of this protocol,
1685we'll have a deeper look into the subtree controlling the behavior of the IPv4
1686subsystem of the Linux kernel.
1687
1688Let's start with the entries in /proc/sys/net/ipv4.
1689
1690ICMP settings
1691-------------
1692
1693icmp_echo_ignore_all and icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts
1694----------------------------------------------------
1695
1696Turn on (1) or off (0), if the kernel should ignore all ICMP ECHO requests, or
1697just those to broadcast and multicast addresses.
1698
1699Please note that if you accept ICMP echo requests with a broadcast/multi\-cast
1700destination address your network may be used as an exploder for denial of
1701service packet flooding attacks to other hosts.
1702
1703icmp_destunreach_rate, icmp_echoreply_rate, icmp_paramprob_rate and icmp_timeexeed_rate
1704---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1705
1706Sets limits for sending ICMP packets to specific targets. A value of zero
1707disables all limiting. Any positive value sets the maximum package rate in
1708hundredth of a second (on Intel systems).
1709
1710IP settings
1711-----------
1712
1713ip_autoconfig
1714-------------
1715
1716This file contains the number one if the host received its IP configuration by
1717RARP, BOOTP, DHCP or a similar mechanism. Otherwise it is zero.
1718
1719ip_default_ttl
1720--------------
1721
1722TTL (Time To Live) for IPv4 interfaces. This is simply the maximum number of
1723hops a packet may travel.
1724
1725ip_dynaddr
1726----------
1727
1728Enable dynamic socket address rewriting on interface address change. This is
1729useful for dialup interface with changing IP addresses.
1730
1731ip_forward
1732----------
1733
1734Enable or disable forwarding of IP packages between interfaces. Changing this
1735value resets all other parameters to their default values. They differ if the
1736kernel is configured as host or router.
1737
1738ip_local_port_range
1739-------------------
1740
1741Range of ports used by TCP and UDP to choose the local port. Contains two
1742numbers, the first number is the lowest port, the second number the highest
1743local port. Default is 1024-4999. Should be changed to 32768-61000 for
1744high-usage systems.
1745
1746ip_no_pmtu_disc
1747---------------
1748
1749Global switch to turn path MTU discovery off. It can also be set on a per
1750socket basis by the applications or on a per route basis.
1751
1752ip_masq_debug
1753-------------
1754
1755Enable/disable debugging of IP masquerading.
1756
1757IP fragmentation settings
1758-------------------------
1759
1760ipfrag_high_trash and ipfrag_low_trash
1761--------------------------------------
1762
1763Maximum memory used to reassemble IP fragments. When ipfrag_high_thresh bytes
1764of memory is allocated for this purpose, the fragment handler will toss
1765packets until ipfrag_low_thresh is reached.
1766
1767ipfrag_time
1768-----------
1769
1770Time in seconds to keep an IP fragment in memory.
1771
1772TCP settings
1773------------
1774
1775tcp_ecn
1776-------
1777
fa00e7e1 1778This file controls the use of the ECN bit in the IPv4 headers. This is a new
1da177e4 1779feature about Explicit Congestion Notification, but some routers and firewalls
fa00e7e1
ML
1780block traffic that has this bit set, so it could be necessary to echo 0 to
1781/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn if you want to talk to these sites. For more info
1da177e4
LT
1782you could read RFC2481.
1783
1784tcp_retrans_collapse
1785--------------------
1786
1787Bug-to-bug compatibility with some broken printers. On retransmit, try to send
1788larger packets to work around bugs in certain TCP stacks. Can be turned off by
1789setting it to zero.
1790
1791tcp_keepalive_probes
1792--------------------
1793
1794Number of keep alive probes TCP sends out, until it decides that the
1795connection is broken.
1796
1797tcp_keepalive_time
1798------------------
1799
1800How often TCP sends out keep alive messages, when keep alive is enabled. The
1801default is 2 hours.
1802
1803tcp_syn_retries
1804---------------
1805
1806Number of times initial SYNs for a TCP connection attempt will be
1807retransmitted. Should not be higher than 255. This is only the timeout for
1808outgoing connections, for incoming connections the number of retransmits is
1809defined by tcp_retries1.
1810
1811tcp_sack
1812--------
1813
1814Enable select acknowledgments after RFC2018.
1815
1816tcp_timestamps
1817--------------
1818
1819Enable timestamps as defined in RFC1323.
1820
1821tcp_stdurg
1822----------
1823
1824Enable the strict RFC793 interpretation of the TCP urgent pointer field. The
1825default is to use the BSD compatible interpretation of the urgent pointer
1826pointing to the first byte after the urgent data. The RFC793 interpretation is
1827to have it point to the last byte of urgent data. Enabling this option may
2fe0ae78 1828lead to interoperability problems. Disabled by default.
1da177e4
LT
1829
1830tcp_syncookies
1831--------------
1832
1833Only valid when the kernel was compiled with CONFIG_SYNCOOKIES. Send out
1834syncookies when the syn backlog queue of a socket overflows. This is to ward
1835off the common 'syn flood attack'. Disabled by default.
1836
1837Note that the concept of a socket backlog is abandoned. This means the peer
1838may not receive reliable error messages from an over loaded server with
1839syncookies enabled.
1840
1841tcp_window_scaling
1842------------------
1843
1844Enable window scaling as defined in RFC1323.
1845
1846tcp_fin_timeout
1847---------------
1848
1849The length of time in seconds it takes to receive a final FIN before the
1850socket is always closed. This is strictly a violation of the TCP
1851specification, but required to prevent denial-of-service attacks.
1852
1853tcp_max_ka_probes
1854-----------------
1855
1856Indicates how many keep alive probes are sent per slow timer run. Should not
1857be set too high to prevent bursts.
1858
1859tcp_max_syn_backlog
1860-------------------
1861
1862Length of the per socket backlog queue. Since Linux 2.2 the backlog specified
1863in listen(2) only specifies the length of the backlog queue of already
1864established sockets. When more connection requests arrive Linux starts to drop
1865packets. When syncookies are enabled the packets are still answered and the
1866maximum queue is effectively ignored.
1867
1868tcp_retries1
1869------------
1870
1871Defines how often an answer to a TCP connection request is retransmitted
1872before giving up.
1873
1874tcp_retries2
1875------------
1876
1877Defines how often a TCP packet is retransmitted before giving up.
1878
1879Interface specific settings
1880---------------------------
1881
1882In the directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf you'll find one subdirectory for each
1883interface the system knows about and one directory calls all. Changes in the
1884all subdirectory affect all interfaces, whereas changes in the other
1885subdirectories affect only one interface. All directories have the same
1886entries:
1887
1888accept_redirects
1889----------------
1890
1891This switch decides if the kernel accepts ICMP redirect messages or not. The
1892default is 'yes' if the kernel is configured for a regular host and 'no' for a
1893router configuration.
1894
1895accept_source_route
1896-------------------
1897
1898Should source routed packages be accepted or declined. The default is
1899dependent on the kernel configuration. It's 'yes' for routers and 'no' for
1900hosts.
1901
1902bootp_relay
1903~~~~~~~~~~~
1904
1905Accept packets with source address 0.b.c.d with destinations not to this host
1906as local ones. It is supposed that a BOOTP relay daemon will catch and forward
1907such packets.
1908
1909The default is 0, since this feature is not implemented yet (kernel version
19102.2.12).
1911
1912forwarding
1913----------
1914
1915Enable or disable IP forwarding on this interface.
1916
1917log_martians
1918------------
1919
1920Log packets with source addresses with no known route to kernel log.
1921
1922mc_forwarding
1923-------------
1924
1925Do multicast routing. The kernel needs to be compiled with CONFIG_MROUTE and a
1926multicast routing daemon is required.
1927
1928proxy_arp
1929---------
1930
1931Does (1) or does not (0) perform proxy ARP.
1932
1933rp_filter
1934---------
1935
1936Integer value determines if a source validation should be made. 1 means yes, 0
1937means no. Disabled by default, but local/broadcast address spoofing is always
1938on.
1939
1940If you set this to 1 on a router that is the only connection for a network to
1941the net, it will prevent spoofing attacks against your internal networks
1942(external addresses can still be spoofed), without the need for additional
1943firewall rules.
1944
1945secure_redirects
1946----------------
1947
1948Accept ICMP redirect messages only for gateways, listed in default gateway
1949list. Enabled by default.
1950
1951shared_media
1952------------
1953
1954If it is not set the kernel does not assume that different subnets on this
1955device can communicate directly. Default setting is 'yes'.
1956
1957send_redirects
1958--------------
1959
1960Determines whether to send ICMP redirects to other hosts.
1961
1962Routing settings
1963----------------
1964
1965The directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/route contains several file to control
1966routing issues.
1967
1968error_burst and error_cost
1969--------------------------
1970
1971These parameters are used to limit how many ICMP destination unreachable to
1972send from the host in question. ICMP destination unreachable messages are
84eb8d06 1973sent when we cannot reach the next hop while trying to transmit a packet.
1da177e4
LT
1974It will also print some error messages to kernel logs if someone is ignoring
1975our ICMP redirects. The higher the error_cost factor is, the fewer
1976destination unreachable and error messages will be let through. Error_burst
1977controls when destination unreachable messages and error messages will be
1978dropped. The default settings limit warning messages to five every second.
1979
1980flush
1981-----
1982
1983Writing to this file results in a flush of the routing cache.
1984
1985gc_elasticity, gc_interval, gc_min_interval_ms, gc_timeout, gc_thresh
1986---------------------------------------------------------------------
1987
1988Values to control the frequency and behavior of the garbage collection
1989algorithm for the routing cache. gc_min_interval is deprecated and replaced
1990by gc_min_interval_ms.
1991
1992
1993max_size
1994--------
1995
1996Maximum size of the routing cache. Old entries will be purged once the cache
1997reached has this size.
1998
1da177e4
LT
1999redirect_load, redirect_number
2000------------------------------
2001
2002Factors which determine if more ICPM redirects should be sent to a specific
2003host. No redirects will be sent once the load limit or the maximum number of
2004redirects has been reached.
2005
2006redirect_silence
2007----------------
2008
2009Timeout for redirects. After this period redirects will be sent again, even if
2010this has been stopped, because the load or number limit has been reached.
2011
2012Network Neighbor handling
2013-------------------------
2014
2015Settings about how to handle connections with direct neighbors (nodes attached
2016to the same link) can be found in the directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh.
2017
2018As we saw it in the conf directory, there is a default subdirectory which
2019holds the default values, and one directory for each interface. The contents
2020of the directories are identical, with the single exception that the default
2021settings contain additional options to set garbage collection parameters.
2022
2023In the interface directories you'll find the following entries:
2024
2025base_reachable_time, base_reachable_time_ms
2026-------------------------------------------
2027
2028A base value used for computing the random reachable time value as specified
2029in RFC2461.
2030
2031Expression of base_reachable_time, which is deprecated, is in seconds.
2032Expression of base_reachable_time_ms is in milliseconds.
2033
2034retrans_time, retrans_time_ms
2035-----------------------------
2036
2037The time between retransmitted Neighbor Solicitation messages.
2038Used for address resolution and to determine if a neighbor is
2039unreachable.
2040
2041Expression of retrans_time, which is deprecated, is in 1/100 seconds (for
2042IPv4) or in jiffies (for IPv6).
2043Expression of retrans_time_ms is in milliseconds.
2044
2045unres_qlen
2046----------
2047
2048Maximum queue length for a pending arp request - the number of packets which
2049are accepted from other layers while the ARP address is still resolved.
2050
2051anycast_delay
2052-------------
2053
2054Maximum for random delay of answers to neighbor solicitation messages in
2055jiffies (1/100 sec). Not yet implemented (Linux does not have anycast support
2056yet).
2057
2058ucast_solicit
2059-------------
2060
2061Maximum number of retries for unicast solicitation.
2062
2063mcast_solicit
2064-------------
2065
2066Maximum number of retries for multicast solicitation.
2067
2068delay_first_probe_time
2069----------------------
2070
2071Delay for the first time probe if the neighbor is reachable. (see
2072gc_stale_time)
2073
2074locktime
2075--------
2076
2077An ARP/neighbor entry is only replaced with a new one if the old is at least
2078locktime old. This prevents ARP cache thrashing.
2079
2080proxy_delay
2081-----------
2082
2083Maximum time (real time is random [0..proxytime]) before answering to an ARP
2084request for which we have an proxy ARP entry. In some cases, this is used to
2085prevent network flooding.
2086
2087proxy_qlen
2088----------
2089
2090Maximum queue length of the delayed proxy arp timer. (see proxy_delay).
2091
53cb4726 2092app_solicit
1da177e4
LT
2093----------
2094
2095Determines the number of requests to send to the user level ARP daemon. Use 0
2096to turn off.
2097
2098gc_stale_time
2099-------------
2100
2101Determines how often to check for stale ARP entries. After an ARP entry is
2102stale it will be resolved again (which is useful when an IP address migrates
2103to another machine). When ucast_solicit is greater than 0 it first tries to
2104send an ARP packet directly to the known host When that fails and
2105mcast_solicit is greater than 0, an ARP request is broadcasted.
2106
21072.9 Appletalk
2108-------------
2109
2110The /proc/sys/net/appletalk directory holds the Appletalk configuration data
2111when Appletalk is loaded. The configurable parameters are:
2112
2113aarp-expiry-time
2114----------------
2115
2116The amount of time we keep an ARP entry before expiring it. Used to age out
2117old hosts.
2118
2119aarp-resolve-time
2120-----------------
2121
2122The amount of time we will spend trying to resolve an Appletalk address.
2123
2124aarp-retransmit-limit
2125---------------------
2126
2127The number of times we will retransmit a query before giving up.
2128
2129aarp-tick-time
2130--------------
2131
2132Controls the rate at which expires are checked.
2133
2134The directory /proc/net/appletalk holds the list of active Appletalk sockets
2135on a machine.
2136
2137The fields indicate the DDP type, the local address (in network:node format)
2138the remote address, the size of the transmit pending queue, the size of the
2139received queue (bytes waiting for applications to read) the state and the uid
2140owning the socket.
2141
2142/proc/net/atalk_iface lists all the interfaces configured for appletalk.It
2143shows the name of the interface, its Appletalk address, the network range on
2144that address (or network number for phase 1 networks), and the status of the
2145interface.
2146
2147/proc/net/atalk_route lists each known network route. It lists the target
2148(network) that the route leads to, the router (may be directly connected), the
2149route flags, and the device the route is using.
2150
21512.10 IPX
2152--------
2153
2154The IPX protocol has no tunable values in proc/sys/net.
2155
2156The IPX protocol does, however, provide proc/net/ipx. This lists each IPX
2157socket giving the local and remote addresses in Novell format (that is
2158network:node:port). In accordance with the strange Novell tradition,
2159everything but the port is in hex. Not_Connected is displayed for sockets that
2160are not tied to a specific remote address. The Tx and Rx queue sizes indicate
2161the number of bytes pending for transmission and reception. The state
2162indicates the state the socket is in and the uid is the owning uid of the
2163socket.
2164
2165The /proc/net/ipx_interface file lists all IPX interfaces. For each interface
2166it gives the network number, the node number, and indicates if the network is
2167the primary network. It also indicates which device it is bound to (or
2168Internal for internal networks) and the Frame Type if appropriate. Linux
2169supports 802.3, 802.2, 802.2 SNAP and DIX (Blue Book) ethernet framing for
2170IPX.
2171
2172The /proc/net/ipx_route table holds a list of IPX routes. For each route it
2173gives the destination network, the router node (or Directly) and the network
2174address of the router (or Connected) for internal networks.
2175
21762.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
2177----------------------------------------------------------
2178
2179The "mqueue" filesystem provides the necessary kernel features to enable the
2180creation of a user space library that implements the POSIX message queues
2181API (as noted by the MSG tag in the POSIX 1003.1-2001 version of the System
2182Interfaces specification.)
2183
2184The "mqueue" filesystem contains values for determining/setting the amount of
2185resources used by the file system.
2186
2187/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/queues_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2188maximum number of message queues allowed on the system.
2189
2190/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msg_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2191maximum number of messages in a queue value. In fact it is the limiting value
2192for another (user) limit which is set in mq_open invocation. This attribute of
2193a queue must be less or equal then msg_max.
2194
2195/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msgsize_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2196maximum message size value (it is every message queue's attribute set during
2197its creation).
2198
d7ff0dbf
JFM
21992.12 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score
2200------------------------------------------------------
2201
2202This file can be used to adjust the score used to select which processes
2203should be killed in an out-of-memory situation. Giving it a high score will
2204increase the likelihood of this process being killed by the oom-killer. Valid
2205values are in the range -16 to +15, plus the special value -17, which disables
2206oom-killing altogether for this process.
2207
22082.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
2209-------------------------------------------------------------
2210
2211------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2212This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer is for
2213any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_adj to tune which
2214process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.
1da177e4
LT
2215
2216------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2217Summary
2218------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2219Certain aspects of kernel behavior can be modified at runtime, without the
2220need to recompile the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the
2221/proc/sys tree can not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo
2222command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings
2223of the kernel.
2224------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f9c99463
RK
2225
22262.14 /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
2227-------------------------------------------------------
2228
2229This file contains IO statistics for each running process
2230
2231Example
2232-------
2233
2234test:/tmp # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.dat &
2235[1] 3828
2236
2237test:/tmp # cat /proc/3828/io
2238rchar: 323934931
2239wchar: 323929600
2240syscr: 632687
2241syscw: 632675
2242read_bytes: 0
2243write_bytes: 323932160
2244cancelled_write_bytes: 0
2245
2246
2247Description
2248-----------
2249
2250rchar
2251-----
2252
2253I/O counter: chars read
2254The number of bytes which this task has caused to be read from storage. This
2255is simply the sum of bytes which this process passed to read() and pread().
2256It includes things like tty IO and it is unaffected by whether or not actual
2257physical disk IO was required (the read might have been satisfied from
2258pagecache)
2259
2260
2261wchar
2262-----
2263
2264I/O counter: chars written
2265The number of bytes which this task has caused, or shall cause to be written
2266to disk. Similar caveats apply here as with rchar.
2267
2268
2269syscr
2270-----
2271
2272I/O counter: read syscalls
2273Attempt to count the number of read I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like read()
2274and pread().
2275
2276
2277syscw
2278-----
2279
2280I/O counter: write syscalls
2281Attempt to count the number of write I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like
2282write() and pwrite().
2283
2284
2285read_bytes
2286----------
2287
2288I/O counter: bytes read
2289Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process really did cause to
2290be fetched from the storage layer. Done at the submit_bio() level, so it is
2291accurate for block-backed filesystems. <please add status regarding NFS and
2292CIFS at a later time>
2293
2294
2295write_bytes
2296-----------
2297
2298I/O counter: bytes written
2299Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process caused to be sent to
2300the storage layer. This is done at page-dirtying time.
2301
2302
2303cancelled_write_bytes
2304---------------------
2305
2306The big inaccuracy here is truncate. If a process writes 1MB to a file and
2307then deletes the file, it will in fact perform no writeout. But it will have
2308been accounted as having caused 1MB of write.
2309In other words: The number of bytes which this process caused to not happen,
2310by truncating pagecache. A task can cause "negative" IO too. If this task
2311truncates some dirty pagecache, some IO which another task has been accounted
2312for (in it's write_bytes) will not be happening. We _could_ just subtract that
2313from the truncating task's write_bytes, but there is information loss in doing
2314that.
2315
2316
2317Note
2318----
2319
2320At its current implementation state, this is a bit racy on 32-bit machines: if
2321process A reads process B's /proc/pid/io while process B is updating one of
2322those 64-bit counters, process A could see an intermediate result.
2323
2324
2325More information about this can be found within the taskstats documentation in
2326Documentation/accounting.
2327
bb90110d
KH
23282.15 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
2329---------------------------------------------------------------
2330When a process is dumped, all anonymous memory is written to a core file as
2331long as the size of the core file isn't limited. But sometimes we don't want
2332to dump some memory segments, for example, huge shared memory. Conversely,
2333sometimes we want to save file-backed memory segments into a core file, not
2334only the individual files.
2335
2336/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter allows you to customize which memory segments
2337will be dumped when the <pid> process is dumped. coredump_filter is a bitmask
2338of memory types. If a bit of the bitmask is set, memory segments of the
2339corresponding memory type are dumped, otherwise they are not dumped.
2340
2341The following 4 memory types are supported:
2342 - (bit 0) anonymous private memory
2343 - (bit 1) anonymous shared memory
2344 - (bit 2) file-backed private memory
2345 - (bit 3) file-backed shared memory
2346
2347 Note that MMIO pages such as frame buffer are never dumped and vDSO pages
2348 are always dumped regardless of the bitmask status.
2349
2350Default value of coredump_filter is 0x3; this means all anonymous memory
2351segments are dumped.
2352
2353If you don't want to dump all shared memory segments attached to pid 1234,
2354write 1 to the process's proc file.
2355
2356 $ echo 0x1 > /proc/1234/coredump_filter
2357
2358When a new process is created, the process inherits the bitmask status from its
2359parent. It is useful to set up coredump_filter before the program runs.
2360For example:
2361
2362 $ echo 0x7 > /proc/self/coredump_filter
2363 $ ./some_program
2364
2d4d4864
RP
23652.16 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
2366--------------------------------------------------------
2367
2368This file contains lines of the form:
2369
237036 35 98:0 /mnt1 /mnt2 rw,noatime master:1 - ext3 /dev/root rw,errors=continue
2371(1)(2)(3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)
2372
2373(1) mount ID: unique identifier of the mount (may be reused after umount)
2374(2) parent ID: ID of parent (or of self for the top of the mount tree)
2375(3) major:minor: value of st_dev for files on filesystem
2376(4) root: root of the mount within the filesystem
2377(5) mount point: mount point relative to the process's root
2378(6) mount options: per mount options
2379(7) optional fields: zero or more fields of the form "tag[:value]"
2380(8) separator: marks the end of the optional fields
2381(9) filesystem type: name of filesystem of the form "type[.subtype]"
2382(10) mount source: filesystem specific information or "none"
2383(11) super options: per super block options
2384
2385Parsers should ignore all unrecognised optional fields. Currently the
2386possible optional fields are:
2387
2388shared:X mount is shared in peer group X
2389master:X mount is slave to peer group X
97e7e0f7 2390propagate_from:X mount is slave and receives propagation from peer group X (*)
2d4d4864
RP
2391unbindable mount is unbindable
2392
97e7e0f7
MS
2393(*) X is the closest dominant peer group under the process's root. If
2394X is the immediate master of the mount, or if there's no dominant peer
2395group under the same root, then only the "master:X" field is present
2396and not the "propagate_from:X" field.
2397
2d4d4864
RP
2398For more information on mount propagation see:
2399
2400 Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.txt
2401
f9c99463 2402------------------------------------------------------------------------------