mm: print out meminit for memmap
[GitHub/mt8127/android_kernel_alcatel_ttab.git] / Documentation / filesystems / proc.txt
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1------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 T H E /proc F I L E S Y S T E M
3------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/proc/sys Terrehon Bowden <terrehon@pacbell.net> October 7 1999
5 Bodo Bauer <bb@ricochet.net>
6
72.4.x update Jorge Nerin <comandante@zaralinux.com> November 14 2000
8------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9Version 1.3 Kernel version 2.2.12
10 Kernel version 2.4.0-test11-pre4
11------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12
13Table of Contents
14-----------------
15
16 0 Preface
17 0.1 Introduction/Credits
18 0.2 Legal Stuff
19
20 1 Collecting System Information
21 1.1 Process-Specific Subdirectories
22 1.2 Kernel data
23 1.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
24 1.4 Networking info in /proc/net
25 1.5 SCSI info
26 1.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
27 1.7 TTY info in /proc/tty
28 1.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
29
30 2 Modifying System Parameters
31 2.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data
32 2.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
33 2.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
34 2.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem
35 2.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
36 2.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
37 2.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
38 2.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
39 2.9 Appletalk
40 2.10 IPX
41 2.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
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42 2.12 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score
43 2.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
f9c99463 44 2.14 /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
bb90110d 45 2.15 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
2d4d4864 46 2.16 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
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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)
a47a126a 299 vmallocinfo Show vmalloced areas
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300..............................................................................
301
302You can, for example, check which interrupts are currently in use and what
303they are used for by looking in the file /proc/interrupts:
304
305 > cat /proc/interrupts
306 CPU0
307 0: 8728810 XT-PIC timer
308 1: 895 XT-PIC keyboard
309 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
310 3: 531695 XT-PIC aha152x
311 4: 2014133 XT-PIC serial
312 5: 44401 XT-PIC pcnet_cs
313 8: 2 XT-PIC rtc
314 11: 8 XT-PIC i82365
315 12: 182918 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
316 13: 1 XT-PIC fpu
317 14: 1232265 XT-PIC ide0
318 15: 7 XT-PIC ide1
319 NMI: 0
320
321In 2.4.* a couple of lines where added to this file LOC & ERR (this time is the
322output of a SMP machine):
323
324 > cat /proc/interrupts
325
326 CPU0 CPU1
327 0: 1243498 1214548 IO-APIC-edge timer
328 1: 8949 8958 IO-APIC-edge keyboard
329 2: 0 0 XT-PIC cascade
330 5: 11286 10161 IO-APIC-edge soundblaster
331 8: 1 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc
332 9: 27422 27407 IO-APIC-edge 3c503
333 12: 113645 113873 IO-APIC-edge PS/2 Mouse
334 13: 0 0 XT-PIC fpu
335 14: 22491 24012 IO-APIC-edge ide0
336 15: 2183 2415 IO-APIC-edge ide1
337 17: 30564 30414 IO-APIC-level eth0
338 18: 177 164 IO-APIC-level bttv
339 NMI: 2457961 2457959
340 LOC: 2457882 2457881
341 ERR: 2155
342
343NMI is incremented in this case because every timer interrupt generates a NMI
344(Non Maskable Interrupt) which is used by the NMI Watchdog to detect lockups.
345
346LOC is the local interrupt counter of the internal APIC of every CPU.
347
348ERR is incremented in the case of errors in the IO-APIC bus (the bus that
349connects the CPUs in a SMP system. This means that an error has been detected,
350the IO-APIC automatically retry the transmission, so it should not be a big
351problem, but you should read the SMP-FAQ.
352
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353In 2.6.2* /proc/interrupts was expanded again. This time the goal was for
354/proc/interrupts to display every IRQ vector in use by the system, not
355just those considered 'most important'. The new vectors are:
356
357 THR -- interrupt raised when a machine check threshold counter
358 (typically counting ECC corrected errors of memory or cache) exceeds
359 a configurable threshold. Only available on some systems.
360
361 TRM -- a thermal event interrupt occurs when a temperature threshold
362 has been exceeded for the CPU. This interrupt may also be generated
363 when the temperature drops back to normal.
364
365 SPU -- a spurious interrupt is some interrupt that was raised then lowered
366 by some IO device before it could be fully processed by the APIC. Hence
367 the APIC sees the interrupt but does not know what device it came from.
368 For this case the APIC will generate the interrupt with a IRQ vector
369 of 0xff. This might also be generated by chipset bugs.
370
371 RES, CAL, TLB -- rescheduling, call and TLB flush interrupts are
372 sent from one CPU to another per the needs of the OS. Typically,
373 their statistics are used by kernel developers and interested users to
374 determine the occurance of interrupt of the given type.
375
376The above IRQ vectors are displayed only when relevent. For example,
377the threshold vector does not exist on x86_64 platforms. Others are
378suppressed when the system is a uniprocessor. As of this writing, only
379i386 and x86_64 platforms support the new IRQ vector displays.
380
381Of some interest is the introduction of the /proc/irq directory to 2.4.
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382It could be used to set IRQ to CPU affinity, this means that you can "hook" an
383IRQ to only one CPU, or to exclude a CPU of handling IRQs. The contents of the
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384irq subdir is one subdir for each IRQ, and two files; default_smp_affinity and
385prof_cpu_mask.
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386
387For example
388 > ls /proc/irq/
389 0 10 12 14 16 18 2 4 6 8 prof_cpu_mask
18404756 390 1 11 13 15 17 19 3 5 7 9 default_smp_affinity
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391 > ls /proc/irq/0/
392 smp_affinity
393
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394smp_affinity is a bitmask, in which you can specify which CPUs can handle the
395IRQ, you can set it by doing:
1da177e4 396
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397 > echo 1 > /proc/irq/10/smp_affinity
398
399This means that only the first CPU will handle the IRQ, but you can also echo
4005 which means that only the first and fourth CPU can handle the IRQ.
1da177e4 401
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402The contents of each smp_affinity file is the same by default:
403
404 > cat /proc/irq/0/smp_affinity
405 ffffffff
1da177e4 406
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407The default_smp_affinity mask applies to all non-active IRQs, which are the
408IRQs which have not yet been allocated/activated, and hence which lack a
409/proc/irq/[0-9]* directory.
1da177e4 410
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411prof_cpu_mask specifies which CPUs are to be profiled by the system wide
412profiler. Default value is ffffffff (all cpus).
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413
414The way IRQs are routed is handled by the IO-APIC, and it's Round Robin
415between all the CPUs which are allowed to handle it. As usual the kernel has
416more info than you and does a better job than you, so the defaults are the
417best choice for almost everyone.
418
419There are three more important subdirectories in /proc: net, scsi, and sys.
420The general rule is that the contents, or even the existence of these
421directories, depend on your kernel configuration. If SCSI is not enabled, the
422directory scsi may not exist. The same is true with the net, which is there
423only when networking support is present in the running kernel.
424
425The slabinfo file gives information about memory usage at the slab level.
426Linux uses slab pools for memory management above page level in version 2.2.
427Commonly used objects have their own slab pool (such as network buffers,
428directory cache, and so on).
429
430..............................................................................
431
432> cat /proc/buddyinfo
433
434Node 0, zone DMA 0 4 5 4 4 3 ...
435Node 0, zone Normal 1 0 0 1 101 8 ...
436Node 0, zone HighMem 2 0 0 1 1 0 ...
437
438Memory fragmentation is a problem under some workloads, and buddyinfo is a
439useful tool for helping diagnose these problems. Buddyinfo will give you a
440clue as to how big an area you can safely allocate, or why a previous
441allocation failed.
442
443Each column represents the number of pages of a certain order which are
444available. In this case, there are 0 chunks of 2^0*PAGE_SIZE available in
445ZONE_DMA, 4 chunks of 2^1*PAGE_SIZE in ZONE_DMA, 101 chunks of 2^4*PAGE_SIZE
446available in ZONE_NORMAL, etc...
447
448..............................................................................
449
450meminfo:
451
452Provides information about distribution and utilization of memory. This
453varies by architecture and compile options. The following is from a
45416GB PIII, which has highmem enabled. You may not have all of these fields.
455
456> cat /proc/meminfo
457
458
459MemTotal: 16344972 kB
460MemFree: 13634064 kB
461Buffers: 3656 kB
462Cached: 1195708 kB
463SwapCached: 0 kB
464Active: 891636 kB
465Inactive: 1077224 kB
466HighTotal: 15597528 kB
467HighFree: 13629632 kB
468LowTotal: 747444 kB
469LowFree: 4432 kB
470SwapTotal: 0 kB
471SwapFree: 0 kB
472Dirty: 968 kB
473Writeback: 0 kB
b88473f7 474AnonPages: 861800 kB
1da177e4 475Mapped: 280372 kB
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476Slab: 284364 kB
477SReclaimable: 159856 kB
478SUnreclaim: 124508 kB
479PageTables: 24448 kB
480NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
481Bounce: 0 kB
482WritebackTmp: 0 kB
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483CommitLimit: 7669796 kB
484Committed_AS: 100056 kB
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485VmallocTotal: 112216 kB
486VmallocUsed: 428 kB
487VmallocChunk: 111088 kB
488
489 MemTotal: Total usable ram (i.e. physical ram minus a few reserved
490 bits and the kernel binary code)
491 MemFree: The sum of LowFree+HighFree
492 Buffers: Relatively temporary storage for raw disk blocks
493 shouldn't get tremendously large (20MB or so)
494 Cached: in-memory cache for files read from the disk (the
495 pagecache). Doesn't include SwapCached
496 SwapCached: Memory that once was swapped out, is swapped back in but
497 still also is in the swapfile (if memory is needed it
498 doesn't need to be swapped out AGAIN because it is already
499 in the swapfile. This saves I/O)
500 Active: Memory that has been used more recently and usually not
501 reclaimed unless absolutely necessary.
502 Inactive: Memory which has been less recently used. It is more
503 eligible to be reclaimed for other purposes
504 HighTotal:
505 HighFree: Highmem is all memory above ~860MB of physical memory
506 Highmem areas are for use by userspace programs, or
507 for the pagecache. The kernel must use tricks to access
508 this memory, making it slower to access than lowmem.
509 LowTotal:
510 LowFree: Lowmem is memory which can be used for everything that
3f6dee9b 511 highmem can be used for, but it is also available for the
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512 kernel's use for its own data structures. Among many
513 other things, it is where everything from the Slab is
514 allocated. Bad things happen when you're out of lowmem.
515 SwapTotal: total amount of swap space available
516 SwapFree: Memory which has been evicted from RAM, and is temporarily
517 on the disk
518 Dirty: Memory which is waiting to get written back to the disk
519 Writeback: Memory which is actively being written back to the disk
b88473f7 520 AnonPages: Non-file backed pages mapped into userspace page tables
1da177e4 521 Mapped: files which have been mmaped, such as libraries
e82443c0 522 Slab: in-kernel data structures cache
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523SReclaimable: Part of Slab, that might be reclaimed, such as caches
524 SUnreclaim: Part of Slab, that cannot be reclaimed on memory pressure
525 PageTables: amount of memory dedicated to the lowest level of page
526 tables.
527NFS_Unstable: NFS pages sent to the server, but not yet committed to stable
528 storage
529 Bounce: Memory used for block device "bounce buffers"
530WritebackTmp: Memory used by FUSE for temporary writeback buffers
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531 CommitLimit: Based on the overcommit ratio ('vm.overcommit_ratio'),
532 this is the total amount of memory currently available to
533 be allocated on the system. This limit is only adhered to
534 if strict overcommit accounting is enabled (mode 2 in
535 'vm.overcommit_memory').
536 The CommitLimit is calculated with the following formula:
537 CommitLimit = ('vm.overcommit_ratio' * Physical RAM) + Swap
538 For example, on a system with 1G of physical RAM and 7G
539 of swap with a `vm.overcommit_ratio` of 30 it would
540 yield a CommitLimit of 7.3G.
541 For more details, see the memory overcommit documentation
542 in vm/overcommit-accounting.
543Committed_AS: The amount of memory presently allocated on the system.
544 The committed memory is a sum of all of the memory which
545 has been allocated by processes, even if it has not been
546 "used" by them as of yet. A process which malloc()'s 1G
547 of memory, but only touches 300M of it will only show up
548 as using 300M of memory even if it has the address space
549 allocated for the entire 1G. This 1G is memory which has
550 been "committed" to by the VM and can be used at any time
551 by the allocating application. With strict overcommit
552 enabled on the system (mode 2 in 'vm.overcommit_memory'),
553 allocations which would exceed the CommitLimit (detailed
554 above) will not be permitted. This is useful if one needs
555 to guarantee that processes will not fail due to lack of
556 memory once that memory has been successfully allocated.
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557VmallocTotal: total size of vmalloc memory area
558 VmallocUsed: amount of vmalloc area which is used
559VmallocChunk: largest contigious block of vmalloc area which is free
560
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561..............................................................................
562
563vmallocinfo:
564
565Provides information about vmalloced/vmaped areas. One line per area,
566containing the virtual address range of the area, size in bytes,
567caller information of the creator, and optional information depending
568on the kind of area :
569
570 pages=nr number of pages
571 phys=addr if a physical address was specified
572 ioremap I/O mapping (ioremap() and friends)
573 vmalloc vmalloc() area
574 vmap vmap()ed pages
575 user VM_USERMAP area
576 vpages buffer for pages pointers was vmalloced (huge area)
577 N<node>=nr (Only on NUMA kernels)
578 Number of pages allocated on memory node <node>
579
580> cat /proc/vmallocinfo
5810xffffc20000000000-0xffffc20000201000 2101248 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
582 /0x2c0 pages=512 vmalloc N0=128 N1=128 N2=128 N3=128
5830xffffc20000201000-0xffffc20000302000 1052672 alloc_large_system_hash+0x204 ...
584 /0x2c0 pages=256 vmalloc N0=64 N1=64 N2=64 N3=64
5850xffffc20000302000-0xffffc20000304000 8192 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
586 phys=7fee8000 ioremap
5870xffffc20000304000-0xffffc20000307000 12288 acpi_tb_verify_table+0x21/0x4f...
588 phys=7fee7000 ioremap
5890xffffc2000031d000-0xffffc2000031f000 8192 init_vdso_vars+0x112/0x210
5900xffffc2000031f000-0xffffc2000032b000 49152 cramfs_uncompress_init+0x2e ...
591 /0x80 pages=11 vmalloc N0=3 N1=3 N2=2 N3=3
5920xffffc2000033a000-0xffffc2000033d000 12288 sys_swapon+0x640/0xac0 ...
593 pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
5940xffffc20000347000-0xffffc2000034c000 20480 xt_alloc_table_info+0xfe ...
595 /0x130 [x_tables] pages=4 vmalloc N0=4
5960xffffffffa0000000-0xffffffffa000f000 61440 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
597 pages=14 vmalloc N2=14
5980xffffffffa000f000-0xffffffffa0014000 20480 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
599 pages=4 vmalloc N1=4
6000xffffffffa0014000-0xffffffffa0017000 12288 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
601 pages=2 vmalloc N1=2
6020xffffffffa0017000-0xffffffffa0022000 45056 sys_init_module+0xc27/0x1d00 ...
603 pages=10 vmalloc N0=10
1da177e4
LT
604
6051.3 IDE devices in /proc/ide
606----------------------------
607
608The subdirectory /proc/ide contains information about all IDE devices of which
609the kernel is aware. There is one subdirectory for each IDE controller, the
610file drivers and a link for each IDE device, pointing to the device directory
611in the controller specific subtree.
612
613The file drivers contains general information about the drivers used for the
614IDE devices:
615
616 > cat /proc/ide/drivers
617 ide-cdrom version 4.53
618 ide-disk version 1.08
619
620More detailed information can be found in the controller specific
621subdirectories. These are named ide0, ide1 and so on. Each of these
18d96779 622directories contains the files shown in table 1-5.
1da177e4
LT
623
624
18d96779 625Table 1-5: IDE controller info in /proc/ide/ide?
1da177e4
LT
626..............................................................................
627 File Content
628 channel IDE channel (0 or 1)
629 config Configuration (only for PCI/IDE bridge)
630 mate Mate name
631 model Type/Chipset of IDE controller
632..............................................................................
633
634Each device connected to a controller has a separate subdirectory in the
18d96779 635controllers directory. The files listed in table 1-6 are contained in these
1da177e4
LT
636directories.
637
638
18d96779 639Table 1-6: IDE device information
1da177e4
LT
640..............................................................................
641 File Content
642 cache The cache
643 capacity Capacity of the medium (in 512Byte blocks)
644 driver driver and version
645 geometry physical and logical geometry
646 identify device identify block
647 media media type
648 model device identifier
649 settings device setup
650 smart_thresholds IDE disk management thresholds
651 smart_values IDE disk management values
652..............................................................................
653
654The most interesting file is settings. This file contains a nice overview of
655the drive parameters:
656
657 # cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings
658 name value min max mode
659 ---- ----- --- --- ----
660 bios_cyl 526 0 65535 rw
661 bios_head 255 0 255 rw
662 bios_sect 63 0 63 rw
663 breada_readahead 4 0 127 rw
664 bswap 0 0 1 r
665 file_readahead 72 0 2097151 rw
666 io_32bit 0 0 3 rw
667 keepsettings 0 0 1 rw
668 max_kb_per_request 122 1 127 rw
669 multcount 0 0 8 rw
670 nice1 1 0 1 rw
671 nowerr 0 0 1 rw
672 pio_mode write-only 0 255 w
673 slow 0 0 1 rw
674 unmaskirq 0 0 1 rw
675 using_dma 0 0 1 rw
676
677
6781.4 Networking info in /proc/net
679--------------------------------
680
681The subdirectory /proc/net follows the usual pattern. Table 1-6 shows the
682additional values you get for IP version 6 if you configure the kernel to
683support this. Table 1-7 lists the files and their meaning.
684
685
686Table 1-6: IPv6 info in /proc/net
687..............................................................................
688 File Content
689 udp6 UDP sockets (IPv6)
690 tcp6 TCP sockets (IPv6)
691 raw6 Raw device statistics (IPv6)
692 igmp6 IP multicast addresses, which this host joined (IPv6)
693 if_inet6 List of IPv6 interface addresses
694 ipv6_route Kernel routing table for IPv6
695 rt6_stats Global IPv6 routing tables statistics
696 sockstat6 Socket statistics (IPv6)
697 snmp6 Snmp data (IPv6)
698..............................................................................
699
700
701Table 1-7: Network info in /proc/net
702..............................................................................
703 File Content
704 arp Kernel ARP table
705 dev network devices with statistics
706 dev_mcast the Layer2 multicast groups a device is listening too
707 (interface index, label, number of references, number of bound
708 addresses).
709 dev_stat network device status
710 ip_fwchains Firewall chain linkage
711 ip_fwnames Firewall chain names
712 ip_masq Directory containing the masquerading tables
713 ip_masquerade Major masquerading table
714 netstat Network statistics
715 raw raw device statistics
716 route Kernel routing table
717 rpc Directory containing rpc info
718 rt_cache Routing cache
719 snmp SNMP data
720 sockstat Socket statistics
721 tcp TCP sockets
722 tr_rif Token ring RIF routing table
723 udp UDP sockets
724 unix UNIX domain sockets
725 wireless Wireless interface data (Wavelan etc)
726 igmp IP multicast addresses, which this host joined
727 psched Global packet scheduler parameters.
728 netlink List of PF_NETLINK sockets
729 ip_mr_vifs List of multicast virtual interfaces
730 ip_mr_cache List of multicast routing cache
731..............................................................................
732
733You can use this information to see which network devices are available in
734your system and how much traffic was routed over those devices:
735
736 > cat /proc/net/dev
737 Inter-|Receive |[...
738 face |bytes packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|[...
739 lo: 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0 [...
740 ppp0:15475140 20721 410 0 0 410 0 0 [...
741 eth0: 614530 7085 0 0 0 0 0 1 [...
742
743 ...] Transmit
744 ...] bytes packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
745 ...] 908188 5596 0 0 0 0 0 0
746 ...] 1375103 17405 0 0 0 0 0 0
747 ...] 1703981 5535 0 0 0 3 0 0
748
749In addition, each Channel Bond interface has it's own directory. For
750example, the bond0 device will have a directory called /proc/net/bond0/.
751It will contain information that is specific to that bond, such as the
752current slaves of the bond, the link status of the slaves, and how
753many times the slaves link has failed.
754
7551.5 SCSI info
756-------------
757
758If you have a SCSI host adapter in your system, you'll find a subdirectory
759named after the driver for this adapter in /proc/scsi. You'll also see a list
760of all recognized SCSI devices in /proc/scsi:
761
762 >cat /proc/scsi/scsi
763 Attached devices:
764 Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
765 Vendor: IBM Model: DGHS09U Rev: 03E0
766 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
767 Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 06 Lun: 00
768 Vendor: PIONEER Model: CD-ROM DR-U06S Rev: 1.04
769 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
770
771
772The directory named after the driver has one file for each adapter found in
773the system. These files contain information about the controller, including
774the used IRQ and the IO address range. The amount of information shown is
775dependent on the adapter you use. The example shows the output for an Adaptec
776AHA-2940 SCSI adapter:
777
778 > cat /proc/scsi/aic7xxx/0
779
780 Adaptec AIC7xxx driver version: 5.1.19/3.2.4
781 Compile Options:
782 TCQ Enabled By Default : Disabled
783 AIC7XXX_PROC_STATS : Disabled
784 AIC7XXX_RESET_DELAY : 5
785 Adapter Configuration:
786 SCSI Adapter: Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter
787 Ultra Wide Controller
788 PCI MMAPed I/O Base: 0xeb001000
789 Adapter SEEPROM Config: SEEPROM found and used.
790 Adaptec SCSI BIOS: Enabled
791 IRQ: 10
792 SCBs: Active 0, Max Active 2,
793 Allocated 15, HW 16, Page 255
794 Interrupts: 160328
795 BIOS Control Word: 0x18b6
796 Adapter Control Word: 0x005b
797 Extended Translation: Enabled
798 Disconnect Enable Flags: 0xffff
799 Ultra Enable Flags: 0x0001
800 Tag Queue Enable Flags: 0x0000
801 Ordered Queue Tag Flags: 0x0000
802 Default Tag Queue Depth: 8
803 Tagged Queue By Device array for aic7xxx host instance 0:
804 {255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255}
805 Actual queue depth per device for aic7xxx host instance 0:
806 {1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1}
807 Statistics:
808 (scsi0:0:0:0)
809 Device using Wide/Sync transfers at 40.0 MByte/sec, offset 8
810 Transinfo settings: current(12/8/1/0), goal(12/8/1/0), user(12/15/1/0)
811 Total transfers 160151 (74577 reads and 85574 writes)
812 (scsi0:0:6:0)
813 Device using Narrow/Sync transfers at 5.0 MByte/sec, offset 15
814 Transinfo settings: current(50/15/0/0), goal(50/15/0/0), user(50/15/0/0)
815 Total transfers 0 (0 reads and 0 writes)
816
817
8181.6 Parallel port info in /proc/parport
819---------------------------------------
820
821The directory /proc/parport contains information about the parallel ports of
822your system. It has one subdirectory for each port, named after the port
823number (0,1,2,...).
824
825These directories contain the four files shown in Table 1-8.
826
827
828Table 1-8: Files in /proc/parport
829..............................................................................
830 File Content
831 autoprobe Any IEEE-1284 device ID information that has been acquired.
832 devices list of the device drivers using that port. A + will appear by the
833 name of the device currently using the port (it might not appear
834 against any).
835 hardware Parallel port's base address, IRQ line and DMA channel.
836 irq IRQ that parport is using for that port. This is in a separate
837 file to allow you to alter it by writing a new value in (IRQ
838 number or none).
839..............................................................................
840
8411.7 TTY info in /proc/tty
842-------------------------
843
844Information about the available and actually used tty's can be found in the
845directory /proc/tty.You'll find entries for drivers and line disciplines in
846this directory, as shown in Table 1-9.
847
848
849Table 1-9: Files in /proc/tty
850..............................................................................
851 File Content
852 drivers list of drivers and their usage
853 ldiscs registered line disciplines
854 driver/serial usage statistic and status of single tty lines
855..............................................................................
856
857To see which tty's are currently in use, you can simply look into the file
858/proc/tty/drivers:
859
860 > cat /proc/tty/drivers
861 pty_slave /dev/pts 136 0-255 pty:slave
862 pty_master /dev/ptm 128 0-255 pty:master
863 pty_slave /dev/ttyp 3 0-255 pty:slave
864 pty_master /dev/pty 2 0-255 pty:master
865 serial /dev/cua 5 64-67 serial:callout
866 serial /dev/ttyS 4 64-67 serial
867 /dev/tty0 /dev/tty0 4 0 system:vtmaster
868 /dev/ptmx /dev/ptmx 5 2 system
869 /dev/console /dev/console 5 1 system:console
870 /dev/tty /dev/tty 5 0 system:/dev/tty
871 unknown /dev/tty 4 1-63 console
872
873
8741.8 Miscellaneous kernel statistics in /proc/stat
875-------------------------------------------------
876
877Various pieces of information about kernel activity are available in the
878/proc/stat file. All of the numbers reported in this file are aggregates
879since the system first booted. For a quick look, simply cat the file:
880
881 > cat /proc/stat
b68f2c3a
LC
882 cpu 2255 34 2290 22625563 6290 127 456 0
883 cpu0 1132 34 1441 11311718 3675 127 438 0
884 cpu1 1123 0 849 11313845 2614 0 18 0
1da177e4
LT
885 intr 114930548 113199788 3 0 5 263 0 4 [... lots more numbers ...]
886 ctxt 1990473
887 btime 1062191376
888 processes 2915
889 procs_running 1
890 procs_blocked 0
891
892The very first "cpu" line aggregates the numbers in all of the other "cpuN"
893lines. These numbers identify the amount of time the CPU has spent performing
894different kinds of work. Time units are in USER_HZ (typically hundredths of a
895second). The meanings of the columns are as follows, from left to right:
896
897- user: normal processes executing in user mode
898- nice: niced processes executing in user mode
899- system: processes executing in kernel mode
900- idle: twiddling thumbs
901- iowait: waiting for I/O to complete
902- irq: servicing interrupts
903- softirq: servicing softirqs
b68f2c3a 904- steal: involuntary wait
1da177e4
LT
905
906The "intr" line gives counts of interrupts serviced since boot time, for each
907of the possible system interrupts. The first column is the total of all
908interrupts serviced; each subsequent column is the total for that particular
909interrupt.
910
911The "ctxt" line gives the total number of context switches across all CPUs.
912
913The "btime" line gives the time at which the system booted, in seconds since
914the Unix epoch.
915
916The "processes" line gives the number of processes and threads created, which
917includes (but is not limited to) those created by calls to the fork() and
918clone() system calls.
919
920The "procs_running" line gives the number of processes currently running on
921CPUs.
922
923The "procs_blocked" line gives the number of processes currently blocked,
924waiting for I/O to complete.
925
37515fac 926
c9de560d
AT
9271.9 Ext4 file system parameters
928------------------------------
37515fac
TT
929
930Information about mounted ext4 file systems can be found in
931/proc/fs/ext4. Each mounted filesystem will have a directory in
932/proc/fs/ext4 based on its device name (i.e., /proc/fs/ext4/hdc or
933/proc/fs/ext4/dm-0). The files in each per-device directory are shown
934in Table 1-10, below.
935
936Table 1-10: Files in /proc/fs/ext4/<devname>
937..............................................................................
938 File Content
939 mb_groups details of multiblock allocator buddy cache of free blocks
940 mb_history multiblock allocation history
941 stats controls whether the multiblock allocator should start
942 collecting statistics, which are shown during the unmount
943 group_prealloc the multiblock allocator will round up allocation
944 requests to a multiple of this tuning parameter if the
945 stripe size is not set in the ext4 superblock
946 max_to_scan The maximum number of extents the multiblock allocator
947 will search to find the best extent
948 min_to_scan The minimum number of extents the multiblock allocator
949 will search to find the best extent
950 order2_req Tuning parameter which controls the minimum size for
951 requests (as a power of 2) where the buddy cache is
952 used
953 stream_req Files which have fewer blocks than this tunable
954 parameter will have their blocks allocated out of a
955 block group specific preallocation pool, so that small
956 files are packed closely together. Each large file
957 will have its blocks allocated out of its own unique
958 preallocation pool.
240799cd
TT
959inode_readahead Tuning parameter which controls the maximum number of
960 inode table blocks that ext4's inode table readahead
961 algorithm will pre-read into the buffer cache
37515fac
TT
962..............................................................................
963
1da177e4
LT
964
965------------------------------------------------------------------------------
966Summary
967------------------------------------------------------------------------------
968The /proc file system serves information about the running system. It not only
969allows access to process data but also allows you to request the kernel status
970by reading files in the hierarchy.
971
972The directory structure of /proc reflects the types of information and makes
973it easy, if not obvious, where to look for specific data.
974------------------------------------------------------------------------------
975
976------------------------------------------------------------------------------
977CHAPTER 2: MODIFYING SYSTEM PARAMETERS
978------------------------------------------------------------------------------
979
980------------------------------------------------------------------------------
981In This Chapter
982------------------------------------------------------------------------------
983* Modifying kernel parameters by writing into files found in /proc/sys
984* Exploring the files which modify certain parameters
985* Review of the /proc/sys file tree
986------------------------------------------------------------------------------
987
988
989A very interesting part of /proc is the directory /proc/sys. This is not only
990a source of information, it also allows you to change parameters within the
991kernel. Be very careful when attempting this. You can optimize your system,
992but you can also cause it to crash. Never alter kernel parameters on a
993production system. Set up a development machine and test to make sure that
994everything works the way you want it to. You may have no alternative but to
995reboot the machine once an error has been made.
996
997To change a value, simply echo the new value into the file. An example is
998given below in the section on the file system data. You need to be root to do
999this. You can create your own boot script to perform this every time your
1000system boots.
1001
1002The files in /proc/sys can be used to fine tune and monitor miscellaneous and
1003general things in the operation of the Linux kernel. Since some of the files
1004can inadvertently disrupt your system, it is advisable to read both
1005documentation and source before actually making adjustments. In any case, be
1006very careful when writing to any of these files. The entries in /proc may
1007change slightly between the 2.1.* and the 2.2 kernel, so if there is any doubt
1008review the kernel documentation in the directory /usr/src/linux/Documentation.
1009This chapter is heavily based on the documentation included in the pre 2.2
1010kernels, and became part of it in version 2.2.1 of the Linux kernel.
1011
10122.1 /proc/sys/fs - File system data
1013-----------------------------------
1014
1015This subdirectory contains specific file system, file handle, inode, dentry
1016and quota information.
1017
1018Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/fs:
1019
1020dentry-state
1021------------
1022
1023Status of the directory cache. Since directory entries are dynamically
1024allocated and deallocated, this file indicates the current status. It holds
1025six values, in which the last two are not used and are always zero. The others
1026are listed in table 2-1.
1027
1028
1029Table 2-1: Status files of the directory cache
1030..............................................................................
1031 File Content
1032 nr_dentry Almost always zero
1033 nr_unused Number of unused cache entries
1034 age_limit
1035 in seconds after the entry may be reclaimed, when memory is short
1036 want_pages internally
1037..............................................................................
1038
1039dquot-nr and dquot-max
1040----------------------
1041
1042The file dquot-max shows the maximum number of cached disk quota entries.
1043
1044The file dquot-nr shows the number of allocated disk quota entries and the
1045number of free disk quota entries.
1046
1047If the number of available cached disk quotas is very low and you have a large
1048number of simultaneous system users, you might want to raise the limit.
1049
1050file-nr and file-max
1051--------------------
1052
1053The kernel allocates file handles dynamically, but doesn't free them again at
1054this time.
1055
1056The value in file-max denotes the maximum number of file handles that the
1057Linux kernel will allocate. When you get a lot of error messages about running
1058out of file handles, you might want to raise this limit. The default value is
105910% of RAM in kilobytes. To change it, just write the new number into the
1060file:
1061
1062 # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1063 4096
1064 # echo 8192 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1065 # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
1066 8192
1067
1068
1069This method of revision is useful for all customizable parameters of the
1070kernel - simply echo the new value to the corresponding file.
1071
1072Historically, the three values in file-nr denoted the number of allocated file
1073handles, the number of allocated but unused file handles, and the maximum
1074number of file handles. Linux 2.6 always reports 0 as the number of free file
1075handles -- this is not an error, it just means that the number of allocated
1076file handles exactly matches the number of used file handles.
1077
1078Attempts to allocate more file descriptors than file-max are reported with
1079printk, look for "VFS: file-max limit <number> reached".
1080
1081inode-state and inode-nr
1082------------------------
1083
1084The file inode-nr contains the first two items from inode-state, so we'll skip
1085to that file...
1086
1087inode-state contains two actual numbers and five dummy values. The numbers
1088are nr_inodes and nr_free_inodes (in order of appearance).
1089
1090nr_inodes
1091~~~~~~~~~
1092
1093Denotes the number of inodes the system has allocated. This number will
1094grow and shrink dynamically.
1095
9cfe015a
ED
1096nr_open
1097-------
1098
1099Denotes the maximum number of file-handles a process can
1100allocate. Default value is 1024*1024 (1048576) which should be
1101enough for most machines. Actual limit depends on RLIMIT_NOFILE
1102resource limit.
1103
1da177e4
LT
1104nr_free_inodes
1105--------------
1106
1107Represents the number of free inodes. Ie. The number of inuse inodes is
1108(nr_inodes - nr_free_inodes).
1109
1da177e4
LT
1110aio-nr and aio-max-nr
1111---------------------
1112
1113aio-nr is the running total of the number of events specified on the
1114io_setup system call for all currently active aio contexts. If aio-nr
1115reaches aio-max-nr then io_setup will fail with EAGAIN. Note that
1116raising aio-max-nr does not result in the pre-allocation or re-sizing
1117of any kernel data structures.
1118
11192.2 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc - Miscellaneous binary formats
1120-----------------------------------------------------------
1121
1122Besides these files, there is the subdirectory /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc. This
1123handles the kernel support for miscellaneous binary formats.
1124
1125Binfmt_misc provides the ability to register additional binary formats to the
1126Kernel without compiling an additional module/kernel. Therefore, binfmt_misc
1127needs to know magic numbers at the beginning or the filename extension of the
1128binary.
1129
1130It works by maintaining a linked list of structs that contain a description of
1131a binary format, including a magic with size (or the filename extension),
1132offset and mask, and the interpreter name. On request it invokes the given
1133interpreter with the original program as argument, as binfmt_java and
1134binfmt_em86 and binfmt_mz do. Since binfmt_misc does not define any default
1135binary-formats, you have to register an additional binary-format.
1136
1137There are two general files in binfmt_misc and one file per registered format.
1138The two general files are register and status.
1139
1140Registering a new binary format
1141-------------------------------
1142
1143To register a new binary format you have to issue the command
1144
1145 echo :name:type:offset:magic:mask:interpreter: > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
1146
1147
1148
1149with appropriate name (the name for the /proc-dir entry), offset (defaults to
11500, if omitted), magic, mask (which can be omitted, defaults to all 0xff) and
1151last but not least, the interpreter that is to be invoked (for example and
1152testing /bin/echo). Type can be M for usual magic matching or E for filename
1153extension matching (give extension in place of magic).
1154
1155Check or reset the status of the binary format handler
1156------------------------------------------------------
1157
1158If you do a cat on the file /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/status, you will get the
1159current status (enabled/disabled) of binfmt_misc. Change the status by echoing
11600 (disables) or 1 (enables) or -1 (caution: this clears all previously
1161registered binary formats) to status. For example echo 0 > status to disable
1162binfmt_misc (temporarily).
1163
1164Status of a single handler
1165--------------------------
1166
1167Each registered handler has an entry in /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc. These files
1168perform the same function as status, but their scope is limited to the actual
1169binary format. By cating this file, you also receive all related information
1170about the interpreter/magic of the binfmt.
1171
1172Example usage of binfmt_misc (emulate binfmt_java)
1173--------------------------------------------------
1174
1175 cd /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
1176 echo ':Java:M::\xca\xfe\xba\xbe::/usr/local/java/bin/javawrapper:' > register
1177 echo ':HTML:E::html::/usr/local/java/bin/appletviewer:' > register
1178 echo ':Applet:M::<!--applet::/usr/local/java/bin/appletviewer:' > register
1179 echo ':DEXE:M::\x0eDEX::/usr/bin/dosexec:' > register
1180
1181
1182These four lines add support for Java executables and Java applets (like
1183binfmt_java, additionally recognizing the .html extension with no need to put
1184<!--applet> to every applet file). You have to install the JDK and the
1185shell-script /usr/local/java/bin/javawrapper too. It works around the
1186brokenness of the Java filename handling. To add a Java binary, just create a
1187link to the class-file somewhere in the path.
1188
11892.3 /proc/sys/kernel - general kernel parameters
1190------------------------------------------------
1191
1192This directory reflects general kernel behaviors. As I've said before, the
1193contents depend on your configuration. Here you'll find the most important
1194files, along with descriptions of what they mean and how to use them.
1195
1196acct
1197----
1198
1199The file contains three values; highwater, lowwater, and frequency.
1200
1201It exists only when BSD-style process accounting is enabled. These values
1202control its behavior. If the free space on the file system where the log lives
1203goes below lowwater percentage, accounting suspends. If it goes above
1204highwater percentage, accounting resumes. Frequency determines how often you
1205check the amount of free space (value is in seconds). Default settings are: 4,
12062, and 30. That is, suspend accounting if there is less than 2 percent free;
1207resume it if we have a value of 3 or more percent; consider information about
1208the amount of free space valid for 30 seconds
1209
1210ctrl-alt-del
1211------------
1212
1213When the value in this file is 0, ctrl-alt-del is trapped and sent to the init
1214program to handle a graceful restart. However, when the value is greater that
1215zero, Linux's reaction to this key combination will be an immediate reboot,
1216without syncing its dirty buffers.
1217
1218[NOTE]
1219 When a program (like dosemu) has the keyboard in raw mode, the
1220 ctrl-alt-del is intercepted by the program before it ever reaches the
1221 kernel tty layer, and it is up to the program to decide what to do with
1222 it.
1223
1224domainname and hostname
1225-----------------------
1226
1227These files can be controlled to set the NIS domainname and hostname of your
1228box. For the classic darkstar.frop.org a simple:
1229
1230 # echo "darkstar" > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname
1231 # echo "frop.org" > /proc/sys/kernel/domainname
1232
1233
1234would suffice to set your hostname and NIS domainname.
1235
1236osrelease, ostype and version
1237-----------------------------
1238
1239The names make it pretty obvious what these fields contain:
1240
1241 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease
1242 2.2.12
1243
1244 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/ostype
1245 Linux
1246
1247 > cat /proc/sys/kernel/version
1248 #4 Fri Oct 1 12:41:14 PDT 1999
1249
1250
1251The files osrelease and ostype should be clear enough. Version needs a little
1252more clarification. The #4 means that this is the 4th kernel built from this
1253source base and the date after it indicates the time the kernel was built. The
1254only way to tune these values is to rebuild the kernel.
1255
1256panic
1257-----
1258
1259The value in this file represents the number of seconds the kernel waits
1260before rebooting on a panic. When you use the software watchdog, the
1261recommended setting is 60. If set to 0, the auto reboot after a kernel panic
1262is disabled, which is the default setting.
1263
1264printk
1265------
1266
1267The four values in printk denote
1268* console_loglevel,
1269* default_message_loglevel,
1270* minimum_console_loglevel and
1271* default_console_loglevel
1272respectively.
1273
1274These values influence printk() behavior when printing or logging error
1275messages, which come from inside the kernel. See syslog(2) for more
1276information on the different log levels.
1277
1278console_loglevel
1279----------------
1280
1281Messages with a higher priority than this will be printed to the console.
1282
1283default_message_level
1284---------------------
1285
1286Messages without an explicit priority will be printed with this priority.
1287
1288minimum_console_loglevel
1289------------------------
1290
1291Minimum (highest) value to which the console_loglevel can be set.
1292
1293default_console_loglevel
1294------------------------
1295
1296Default value for console_loglevel.
1297
1298sg-big-buff
1299-----------
1300
1301This file shows the size of the generic SCSI (sg) buffer. At this point, you
1302can't tune it yet, but you can change it at compile time by editing
1303include/scsi/sg.h and changing the value of SG_BIG_BUFF.
1304
1305If you use a scanner with SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) you might want to set
1306this to a higher value. Refer to the SANE documentation on this issue.
1307
1308modprobe
1309--------
1310
1311The location where the modprobe binary is located. The kernel uses this
1312program to load modules on demand.
1313
1314unknown_nmi_panic
1315-----------------
1316
1317The value in this file affects behavior of handling NMI. When the value is
1318non-zero, unknown NMI is trapped and then panic occurs. At that time, kernel
1319debugging information is displayed on console.
1320
1321NMI switch that most IA32 servers have fires unknown NMI up, for example.
1322If a system hangs up, try pressing the NMI switch.
1323
22b8ab66
BW
1324panic_on_unrecovered_nmi
1325------------------------
1326
1327The default Linux behaviour on an NMI of either memory or unknown is to continue
1328operation. For many environments such as scientific computing it is preferable
1329that the box is taken out and the error dealt with than an uncorrected
1330parity/ECC error get propogated.
1331
1332A small number of systems do generate NMI's for bizarre random reasons such as
1333power management so the default is off. That sysctl works like the existing
1334panic controls already in that directory.
1335
e33e89ab
DZ
1336nmi_watchdog
1337------------
1338
1339Enables/Disables the NMI watchdog on x86 systems. When the value is non-zero
1340the NMI watchdog is enabled and will continuously test all online cpus to
1341determine whether or not they are still functioning properly.
1342
1343Because the NMI watchdog shares registers with oprofile, by disabling the NMI
1344watchdog, oprofile may have more registers to utilize.
1da177e4 1345
61e55d05
ND
1346msgmni
1347------
1348
1349Maximum number of message queue ids on the system.
1350This value scales to the amount of lowmem. It is automatically recomputed
1351upon memory add/remove or ipc namespace creation/removal.
1352When a value is written into this file, msgmni's value becomes fixed, i.e. it
1353is not recomputed anymore when one of the above events occurs.
1354Use auto_msgmni to change this behavior.
1355
1356auto_msgmni
1357-----------
1358
1359Enables/Disables automatic recomputing of msgmni upon memory add/remove or
1360upon ipc namespace creation/removal (see the msgmni description above).
1361Echoing "1" into this file enables msgmni automatic recomputing.
1362Echoing "0" turns it off.
1363auto_msgmni default value is 1.
1364
1da177e4
LT
1365
13662.4 /proc/sys/vm - The virtual memory subsystem
1367-----------------------------------------------
1368
1369The files in this directory can be used to tune the operation of the virtual
1370memory (VM) subsystem of the Linux kernel.
1371
1372vfs_cache_pressure
1373------------------
1374
1375Controls the tendency of the kernel to reclaim the memory which is used for
1376caching of directory and inode objects.
1377
1378At the default value of vfs_cache_pressure=100 the kernel will attempt to
1379reclaim dentries and inodes at a "fair" rate with respect to pagecache and
1380swapcache reclaim. Decreasing vfs_cache_pressure causes the kernel to prefer
1381to retain dentry and inode caches. Increasing vfs_cache_pressure beyond 100
1382causes the kernel to prefer to reclaim dentries and inodes.
1383
1384dirty_background_ratio
1385----------------------
1386
1387Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which
1388the pdflush background writeback daemon will start writing out dirty data.
1389
1390dirty_ratio
1391-----------------
1392
1393Contains, as a percentage of total system memory, the number of pages at which
1394a process which is generating disk writes will itself start writing out dirty
1395data.
1396
1397dirty_writeback_centisecs
1398-------------------------
1399
1400The pdflush writeback daemons will periodically wake up and write `old' data
1401out to disk. This tunable expresses the interval between those wakeups, in
1402100'ths of a second.
1403
1404Setting this to zero disables periodic writeback altogether.
1405
1406dirty_expire_centisecs
1407----------------------
1408
1409This tunable is used to define when dirty data is old enough to be eligible
1410for writeout by the pdflush daemons. It is expressed in 100'ths of a second.
1411Data which has been dirty in-memory for longer than this interval will be
1412written out next time a pdflush daemon wakes up.
1413
195cf453
BG
1414highmem_is_dirtyable
1415--------------------
1416
1417Only present if CONFIG_HIGHMEM is set.
1418
1419This defaults to 0 (false), meaning that the ratios set above are calculated
1420as a percentage of lowmem only. This protects against excessive scanning
1421in page reclaim, swapping and general VM distress.
1422
1423Setting this to 1 can be useful on 32 bit machines where you want to make
1424random changes within an MMAPed file that is larger than your available
1425lowmem without causing large quantities of random IO. Is is safe if the
1426behavior of all programs running on the machine is known and memory will
1427not be otherwise stressed.
1428
1da177e4
LT
1429legacy_va_layout
1430----------------
1431
1432If non-zero, this sysctl disables the new 32-bit mmap mmap layout - the kernel
1433will use the legacy (2.4) layout for all processes.
1434
7786fa9a 1435lowmem_reserve_ratio
1da177e4
LT
1436---------------------
1437
1438For some specialised workloads on highmem machines it is dangerous for
1439the kernel to allow process memory to be allocated from the "lowmem"
1440zone. This is because that memory could then be pinned via the mlock()
1441system call, or by unavailability of swapspace.
1442
1443And on large highmem machines this lack of reclaimable lowmem memory
1444can be fatal.
1445
1446So the Linux page allocator has a mechanism which prevents allocations
1447which _could_ use highmem from using too much lowmem. This means that
1448a certain amount of lowmem is defended from the possibility of being
1449captured into pinned user memory.
1450
1451(The same argument applies to the old 16 megabyte ISA DMA region. This
1452mechanism will also defend that region from allocations which could use
1453highmem or lowmem).
1454
7786fa9a
YG
1455The `lowmem_reserve_ratio' tunable determines how aggressive the kernel is
1456in defending these lower zones.
1da177e4
LT
1457
1458If you have a machine which uses highmem or ISA DMA and your
1459applications are using mlock(), or if you are running with no swap then
7786fa9a
YG
1460you probably should change the lowmem_reserve_ratio setting.
1461
1462The lowmem_reserve_ratio is an array. You can see them by reading this file.
1463-
1464% cat /proc/sys/vm/lowmem_reserve_ratio
1465256 256 32
1466-
1467Note: # of this elements is one fewer than number of zones. Because the highest
1468 zone's value is not necessary for following calculation.
1469
1470But, these values are not used directly. The kernel calculates # of protection
1471pages for each zones from them. These are shown as array of protection pages
1472in /proc/zoneinfo like followings. (This is an example of x86-64 box).
1473Each zone has an array of protection pages like this.
1474
1475-
1476Node 0, zone DMA
1477 pages free 1355
1478 min 3
1479 low 3
1480 high 4
1481 :
1482 :
1483 numa_other 0
1484 protection: (0, 2004, 2004, 2004)
1485 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1486 pagesets
1487 cpu: 0 pcp: 0
1488 :
1489-
1490These protections are added to score to judge whether this zone should be used
1491for page allocation or should be reclaimed.
1492
1493In this example, if normal pages (index=2) are required to this DMA zone and
1494pages_high is used for watermark, the kernel judges this zone should not be
1495used because pages_free(1355) is smaller than watermark + protection[2]
1496(4 + 2004 = 2008). If this protection value is 0, this zone would be used for
1497normal page requirement. If requirement is DMA zone(index=0), protection[0]
1498(=0) is used.
1499
d9195881 1500zone[i]'s protection[j] is calculated by following expression.
7786fa9a
YG
1501
1502(i < j):
1503 zone[i]->protection[j]
1504 = (total sums of present_pages from zone[i+1] to zone[j] on the node)
1505 / lowmem_reserve_ratio[i];
1506(i = j):
1507 (should not be protected. = 0;
1508(i > j):
1509 (not necessary, but looks 0)
1510
1511The default values of lowmem_reserve_ratio[i] are
1512 256 (if zone[i] means DMA or DMA32 zone)
1513 32 (others).
1514As above expression, they are reciprocal number of ratio.
1515256 means 1/256. # of protection pages becomes about "0.39%" of total present
1516pages of higher zones on the node.
1517
1518If you would like to protect more pages, smaller values are effective.
1519The minimum value is 1 (1/1 -> 100%).
1da177e4
LT
1520
1521page-cluster
1522------------
1523
1524page-cluster controls the number of pages which are written to swap in
1525a single attempt. The swap I/O size.
1526
1527It is a logarithmic value - setting it to zero means "1 page", setting
1528it to 1 means "2 pages", setting it to 2 means "4 pages", etc.
1529
1530The default value is three (eight pages at a time). There may be some
1531small benefits in tuning this to a different value if your workload is
1532swap-intensive.
1533
1534overcommit_memory
1535-----------------
1536
af97c722
CE
1537Controls overcommit of system memory, possibly allowing processes
1538to allocate (but not use) more memory than is actually available.
1539
1540
15410 - Heuristic overcommit handling. Obvious overcommits of
1542 address space are refused. Used for a typical system. It
1543 ensures a seriously wild allocation fails while allowing
1544 overcommit to reduce swap usage. root is allowed to
53cb4726 1545 allocate slightly more memory in this mode. This is the
af97c722
CE
1546 default.
1547
15481 - Always overcommit. Appropriate for some scientific
1549 applications.
1550
15512 - Don't overcommit. The total address space commit
1552 for the system is not permitted to exceed swap plus a
1553 configurable percentage (default is 50) of physical RAM.
1554 Depending on the percentage you use, in most situations
1555 this means a process will not be killed while attempting
1556 to use already-allocated memory but will receive errors
1557 on memory allocation as appropriate.
1558
1559overcommit_ratio
1560----------------
1561
1562Percentage of physical memory size to include in overcommit calculations
1563(see above.)
1564
1565Memory allocation limit = swapspace + physmem * (overcommit_ratio / 100)
1566
1567 swapspace = total size of all swap areas
1568 physmem = size of physical memory in system
1da177e4
LT
1569
1570nr_hugepages and hugetlb_shm_group
1571----------------------------------
1572
1573nr_hugepages configures number of hugetlb page reserved for the system.
1574
1575hugetlb_shm_group contains group id that is allowed to create SysV shared
1576memory segment using hugetlb page.
1577
ed7ed365
MG
1578hugepages_treat_as_movable
1579--------------------------
1580
1581This parameter is only useful when kernelcore= is specified at boot time to
1582create ZONE_MOVABLE for pages that may be reclaimed or migrated. Huge pages
1583are not movable so are not normally allocated from ZONE_MOVABLE. A non-zero
1584value written to hugepages_treat_as_movable allows huge pages to be allocated
1585from ZONE_MOVABLE.
1586
1587Once enabled, the ZONE_MOVABLE is treated as an area of memory the huge
1588pages pool can easily grow or shrink within. Assuming that applications are
1589not running that mlock() a lot of memory, it is likely the huge pages pool
1590can grow to the size of ZONE_MOVABLE by repeatedly entering the desired value
1591into nr_hugepages and triggering page reclaim.
1592
1da177e4
LT
1593laptop_mode
1594-----------
1595
1596laptop_mode is a knob that controls "laptop mode". All the things that are
a09a20b5 1597controlled by this knob are discussed in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
1da177e4
LT
1598
1599block_dump
1600----------
1601
1602block_dump enables block I/O debugging when set to a nonzero value. More
a09a20b5 1603information on block I/O debugging is in Documentation/laptops/laptop-mode.txt.
1da177e4
LT
1604
1605swap_token_timeout
1606------------------
1607
1608This file contains valid hold time of swap out protection token. The Linux
1609VM has token based thrashing control mechanism and uses the token to prevent
1610unnecessary page faults in thrashing situation. The unit of the value is
1611second. The value would be useful to tune thrashing behavior.
1612
9d0243bc
AM
1613drop_caches
1614-----------
1615
1616Writing to this will cause the kernel to drop clean caches, dentries and
1617inodes from memory, causing that memory to become free.
1618
1619To free pagecache:
1620 echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1621To free dentries and inodes:
1622 echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1623To free pagecache, dentries and inodes:
1624 echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
1625
1626As this is a non-destructive operation and dirty objects are not freeable, the
1627user should run `sync' first.
1628
1629
1da177e4
LT
16302.5 /proc/sys/dev - Device specific parameters
1631----------------------------------------------
1632
1633Currently there is only support for CDROM drives, and for those, there is only
1634one read-only file containing information about the CD-ROM drives attached to
1635the system:
1636
1637 >cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info
1638 CD-ROM information, Id: cdrom.c 2.55 1999/04/25
1639
1640 drive name: sr0 hdb
1641 drive speed: 32 40
1642 drive # of slots: 1 0
1643 Can close tray: 1 1
1644 Can open tray: 1 1
1645 Can lock tray: 1 1
1646 Can change speed: 1 1
1647 Can select disk: 0 1
1648 Can read multisession: 1 1
1649 Can read MCN: 1 1
1650 Reports media changed: 1 1
1651 Can play audio: 1 1
1652
1653
1654You see two drives, sr0 and hdb, along with a list of their features.
1655
16562.6 /proc/sys/sunrpc - Remote procedure calls
1657---------------------------------------------
1658
1659This directory contains four files, which enable or disable debugging for the
1660RPC functions NFS, NFS-daemon, RPC and NLM. The default values are 0. They can
1661be set to one to turn debugging on. (The default value is 0 for each)
1662
16632.7 /proc/sys/net - Networking stuff
1664------------------------------------
1665
1666The interface to the networking parts of the kernel is located in
1667/proc/sys/net. Table 2-3 shows all possible subdirectories. You may see only
1668some of them, depending on your kernel's configuration.
1669
1670
1671Table 2-3: Subdirectories in /proc/sys/net
1672..............................................................................
1673 Directory Content Directory Content
1674 core General parameter appletalk Appletalk protocol
1675 unix Unix domain sockets netrom NET/ROM
1676 802 E802 protocol ax25 AX25
1677 ethernet Ethernet protocol rose X.25 PLP layer
1678 ipv4 IP version 4 x25 X.25 protocol
1679 ipx IPX token-ring IBM token ring
1680 bridge Bridging decnet DEC net
1681 ipv6 IP version 6
1682..............................................................................
1683
1684We will concentrate on IP networking here. Since AX15, X.25, and DEC Net are
1685only minor players in the Linux world, we'll skip them in this chapter. You'll
1686find some short info on Appletalk and IPX further on in this chapter. Review
1687the online documentation and the kernel source to get a detailed view of the
1688parameters for those protocols. In this section we'll discuss the
1689subdirectories printed in bold letters in the table above. As default values
1690are suitable for most needs, there is no need to change these values.
1691
1692/proc/sys/net/core - Network core options
1693-----------------------------------------
1694
1695rmem_default
1696------------
1697
1698The default setting of the socket receive buffer in bytes.
1699
1700rmem_max
1701--------
1702
1703The maximum receive socket buffer size in bytes.
1704
1705wmem_default
1706------------
1707
1708The default setting (in bytes) of the socket send buffer.
1709
1710wmem_max
1711--------
1712
1713The maximum send socket buffer size in bytes.
1714
1715message_burst and message_cost
1716------------------------------
1717
1718These parameters are used to limit the warning messages written to the kernel
1719log from the networking code. They enforce a rate limit to make a
1720denial-of-service attack impossible. A higher message_cost factor, results in
1721fewer messages that will be written. Message_burst controls when messages will
1722be dropped. The default settings limit warning messages to one every five
1723seconds.
1724
a2a316fd
SH
1725warnings
1726--------
1727
1728This controls console messages from the networking stack that can occur because
1729of problems on the network like duplicate address or bad checksums. Normally,
1730this should be enabled, but if the problem persists the messages can be
1731disabled.
1732
1733
1da177e4
LT
1734netdev_max_backlog
1735------------------
1736
1737Maximum number of packets, queued on the INPUT side, when the interface
1738receives packets faster than kernel can process them.
1739
1740optmem_max
1741----------
1742
1743Maximum ancillary buffer size allowed per socket. Ancillary data is a sequence
1744of struct cmsghdr structures with appended data.
1745
1746/proc/sys/net/unix - Parameters for Unix domain sockets
1747-------------------------------------------------------
1748
1749There are only two files in this subdirectory. They control the delays for
1750deleting and destroying socket descriptors.
1751
17522.8 /proc/sys/net/ipv4 - IPV4 settings
1753--------------------------------------
1754
1755IP version 4 is still the most used protocol in Unix networking. It will be
1756replaced by IP version 6 in the next couple of years, but for the moment it's
1757the de facto standard for the internet and is used in most networking
1758environments around the world. Because of the importance of this protocol,
1759we'll have a deeper look into the subtree controlling the behavior of the IPv4
1760subsystem of the Linux kernel.
1761
1762Let's start with the entries in /proc/sys/net/ipv4.
1763
1764ICMP settings
1765-------------
1766
1767icmp_echo_ignore_all and icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts
1768----------------------------------------------------
1769
1770Turn on (1) or off (0), if the kernel should ignore all ICMP ECHO requests, or
1771just those to broadcast and multicast addresses.
1772
1773Please note that if you accept ICMP echo requests with a broadcast/multi\-cast
1774destination address your network may be used as an exploder for denial of
1775service packet flooding attacks to other hosts.
1776
1777icmp_destunreach_rate, icmp_echoreply_rate, icmp_paramprob_rate and icmp_timeexeed_rate
1778---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1779
1780Sets limits for sending ICMP packets to specific targets. A value of zero
1781disables all limiting. Any positive value sets the maximum package rate in
1782hundredth of a second (on Intel systems).
1783
1784IP settings
1785-----------
1786
1787ip_autoconfig
1788-------------
1789
1790This file contains the number one if the host received its IP configuration by
1791RARP, BOOTP, DHCP or a similar mechanism. Otherwise it is zero.
1792
1793ip_default_ttl
1794--------------
1795
1796TTL (Time To Live) for IPv4 interfaces. This is simply the maximum number of
1797hops a packet may travel.
1798
1799ip_dynaddr
1800----------
1801
1802Enable dynamic socket address rewriting on interface address change. This is
1803useful for dialup interface with changing IP addresses.
1804
1805ip_forward
1806----------
1807
1808Enable or disable forwarding of IP packages between interfaces. Changing this
1809value resets all other parameters to their default values. They differ if the
1810kernel is configured as host or router.
1811
1812ip_local_port_range
1813-------------------
1814
1815Range of ports used by TCP and UDP to choose the local port. Contains two
1816numbers, the first number is the lowest port, the second number the highest
1817local port. Default is 1024-4999. Should be changed to 32768-61000 for
1818high-usage systems.
1819
1820ip_no_pmtu_disc
1821---------------
1822
1823Global switch to turn path MTU discovery off. It can also be set on a per
1824socket basis by the applications or on a per route basis.
1825
1826ip_masq_debug
1827-------------
1828
1829Enable/disable debugging of IP masquerading.
1830
1831IP fragmentation settings
1832-------------------------
1833
1834ipfrag_high_trash and ipfrag_low_trash
1835--------------------------------------
1836
1837Maximum memory used to reassemble IP fragments. When ipfrag_high_thresh bytes
1838of memory is allocated for this purpose, the fragment handler will toss
1839packets until ipfrag_low_thresh is reached.
1840
1841ipfrag_time
1842-----------
1843
1844Time in seconds to keep an IP fragment in memory.
1845
1846TCP settings
1847------------
1848
1849tcp_ecn
1850-------
1851
fa00e7e1 1852This file controls the use of the ECN bit in the IPv4 headers. This is a new
1da177e4 1853feature about Explicit Congestion Notification, but some routers and firewalls
fa00e7e1
ML
1854block traffic that has this bit set, so it could be necessary to echo 0 to
1855/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn if you want to talk to these sites. For more info
1da177e4
LT
1856you could read RFC2481.
1857
1858tcp_retrans_collapse
1859--------------------
1860
1861Bug-to-bug compatibility with some broken printers. On retransmit, try to send
1862larger packets to work around bugs in certain TCP stacks. Can be turned off by
1863setting it to zero.
1864
1865tcp_keepalive_probes
1866--------------------
1867
1868Number of keep alive probes TCP sends out, until it decides that the
1869connection is broken.
1870
1871tcp_keepalive_time
1872------------------
1873
1874How often TCP sends out keep alive messages, when keep alive is enabled. The
1875default is 2 hours.
1876
1877tcp_syn_retries
1878---------------
1879
1880Number of times initial SYNs for a TCP connection attempt will be
1881retransmitted. Should not be higher than 255. This is only the timeout for
1882outgoing connections, for incoming connections the number of retransmits is
1883defined by tcp_retries1.
1884
1885tcp_sack
1886--------
1887
1888Enable select acknowledgments after RFC2018.
1889
1890tcp_timestamps
1891--------------
1892
1893Enable timestamps as defined in RFC1323.
1894
1895tcp_stdurg
1896----------
1897
1898Enable the strict RFC793 interpretation of the TCP urgent pointer field. The
1899default is to use the BSD compatible interpretation of the urgent pointer
1900pointing to the first byte after the urgent data. The RFC793 interpretation is
1901to have it point to the last byte of urgent data. Enabling this option may
2fe0ae78 1902lead to interoperability problems. Disabled by default.
1da177e4
LT
1903
1904tcp_syncookies
1905--------------
1906
1907Only valid when the kernel was compiled with CONFIG_SYNCOOKIES. Send out
1908syncookies when the syn backlog queue of a socket overflows. This is to ward
1909off the common 'syn flood attack'. Disabled by default.
1910
1911Note that the concept of a socket backlog is abandoned. This means the peer
1912may not receive reliable error messages from an over loaded server with
1913syncookies enabled.
1914
1915tcp_window_scaling
1916------------------
1917
1918Enable window scaling as defined in RFC1323.
1919
1920tcp_fin_timeout
1921---------------
1922
1923The length of time in seconds it takes to receive a final FIN before the
1924socket is always closed. This is strictly a violation of the TCP
1925specification, but required to prevent denial-of-service attacks.
1926
1927tcp_max_ka_probes
1928-----------------
1929
1930Indicates how many keep alive probes are sent per slow timer run. Should not
1931be set too high to prevent bursts.
1932
1933tcp_max_syn_backlog
1934-------------------
1935
1936Length of the per socket backlog queue. Since Linux 2.2 the backlog specified
1937in listen(2) only specifies the length of the backlog queue of already
1938established sockets. When more connection requests arrive Linux starts to drop
1939packets. When syncookies are enabled the packets are still answered and the
1940maximum queue is effectively ignored.
1941
1942tcp_retries1
1943------------
1944
1945Defines how often an answer to a TCP connection request is retransmitted
1946before giving up.
1947
1948tcp_retries2
1949------------
1950
1951Defines how often a TCP packet is retransmitted before giving up.
1952
1953Interface specific settings
1954---------------------------
1955
1956In the directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf you'll find one subdirectory for each
1957interface the system knows about and one directory calls all. Changes in the
1958all subdirectory affect all interfaces, whereas changes in the other
1959subdirectories affect only one interface. All directories have the same
1960entries:
1961
1962accept_redirects
1963----------------
1964
1965This switch decides if the kernel accepts ICMP redirect messages or not. The
1966default is 'yes' if the kernel is configured for a regular host and 'no' for a
1967router configuration.
1968
1969accept_source_route
1970-------------------
1971
1972Should source routed packages be accepted or declined. The default is
1973dependent on the kernel configuration. It's 'yes' for routers and 'no' for
1974hosts.
1975
1976bootp_relay
1977~~~~~~~~~~~
1978
1979Accept packets with source address 0.b.c.d with destinations not to this host
1980as local ones. It is supposed that a BOOTP relay daemon will catch and forward
1981such packets.
1982
1983The default is 0, since this feature is not implemented yet (kernel version
19842.2.12).
1985
1986forwarding
1987----------
1988
1989Enable or disable IP forwarding on this interface.
1990
1991log_martians
1992------------
1993
1994Log packets with source addresses with no known route to kernel log.
1995
1996mc_forwarding
1997-------------
1998
1999Do multicast routing. The kernel needs to be compiled with CONFIG_MROUTE and a
2000multicast routing daemon is required.
2001
2002proxy_arp
2003---------
2004
2005Does (1) or does not (0) perform proxy ARP.
2006
2007rp_filter
2008---------
2009
2010Integer value determines if a source validation should be made. 1 means yes, 0
2011means no. Disabled by default, but local/broadcast address spoofing is always
2012on.
2013
2014If you set this to 1 on a router that is the only connection for a network to
2015the net, it will prevent spoofing attacks against your internal networks
2016(external addresses can still be spoofed), without the need for additional
2017firewall rules.
2018
2019secure_redirects
2020----------------
2021
2022Accept ICMP redirect messages only for gateways, listed in default gateway
2023list. Enabled by default.
2024
2025shared_media
2026------------
2027
2028If it is not set the kernel does not assume that different subnets on this
2029device can communicate directly. Default setting is 'yes'.
2030
2031send_redirects
2032--------------
2033
2034Determines whether to send ICMP redirects to other hosts.
2035
2036Routing settings
2037----------------
2038
2039The directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/route contains several file to control
2040routing issues.
2041
2042error_burst and error_cost
2043--------------------------
2044
2045These parameters are used to limit how many ICMP destination unreachable to
2046send from the host in question. ICMP destination unreachable messages are
84eb8d06 2047sent when we cannot reach the next hop while trying to transmit a packet.
1da177e4
LT
2048It will also print some error messages to kernel logs if someone is ignoring
2049our ICMP redirects. The higher the error_cost factor is, the fewer
2050destination unreachable and error messages will be let through. Error_burst
2051controls when destination unreachable messages and error messages will be
2052dropped. The default settings limit warning messages to five every second.
2053
2054flush
2055-----
2056
2057Writing to this file results in a flush of the routing cache.
2058
2059gc_elasticity, gc_interval, gc_min_interval_ms, gc_timeout, gc_thresh
2060---------------------------------------------------------------------
2061
2062Values to control the frequency and behavior of the garbage collection
2063algorithm for the routing cache. gc_min_interval is deprecated and replaced
2064by gc_min_interval_ms.
2065
2066
2067max_size
2068--------
2069
2070Maximum size of the routing cache. Old entries will be purged once the cache
2071reached has this size.
2072
1da177e4
LT
2073redirect_load, redirect_number
2074------------------------------
2075
2076Factors which determine if more ICPM redirects should be sent to a specific
2077host. No redirects will be sent once the load limit or the maximum number of
2078redirects has been reached.
2079
2080redirect_silence
2081----------------
2082
2083Timeout for redirects. After this period redirects will be sent again, even if
2084this has been stopped, because the load or number limit has been reached.
2085
2086Network Neighbor handling
2087-------------------------
2088
2089Settings about how to handle connections with direct neighbors (nodes attached
2090to the same link) can be found in the directory /proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh.
2091
2092As we saw it in the conf directory, there is a default subdirectory which
2093holds the default values, and one directory for each interface. The contents
2094of the directories are identical, with the single exception that the default
2095settings contain additional options to set garbage collection parameters.
2096
2097In the interface directories you'll find the following entries:
2098
2099base_reachable_time, base_reachable_time_ms
2100-------------------------------------------
2101
2102A base value used for computing the random reachable time value as specified
2103in RFC2461.
2104
2105Expression of base_reachable_time, which is deprecated, is in seconds.
2106Expression of base_reachable_time_ms is in milliseconds.
2107
2108retrans_time, retrans_time_ms
2109-----------------------------
2110
2111The time between retransmitted Neighbor Solicitation messages.
2112Used for address resolution and to determine if a neighbor is
2113unreachable.
2114
2115Expression of retrans_time, which is deprecated, is in 1/100 seconds (for
2116IPv4) or in jiffies (for IPv6).
2117Expression of retrans_time_ms is in milliseconds.
2118
2119unres_qlen
2120----------
2121
2122Maximum queue length for a pending arp request - the number of packets which
2123are accepted from other layers while the ARP address is still resolved.
2124
2125anycast_delay
2126-------------
2127
2128Maximum for random delay of answers to neighbor solicitation messages in
2129jiffies (1/100 sec). Not yet implemented (Linux does not have anycast support
2130yet).
2131
2132ucast_solicit
2133-------------
2134
2135Maximum number of retries for unicast solicitation.
2136
2137mcast_solicit
2138-------------
2139
2140Maximum number of retries for multicast solicitation.
2141
2142delay_first_probe_time
2143----------------------
2144
2145Delay for the first time probe if the neighbor is reachable. (see
2146gc_stale_time)
2147
2148locktime
2149--------
2150
2151An ARP/neighbor entry is only replaced with a new one if the old is at least
2152locktime old. This prevents ARP cache thrashing.
2153
2154proxy_delay
2155-----------
2156
2157Maximum time (real time is random [0..proxytime]) before answering to an ARP
2158request for which we have an proxy ARP entry. In some cases, this is used to
2159prevent network flooding.
2160
2161proxy_qlen
2162----------
2163
2164Maximum queue length of the delayed proxy arp timer. (see proxy_delay).
2165
53cb4726 2166app_solicit
1da177e4
LT
2167----------
2168
2169Determines the number of requests to send to the user level ARP daemon. Use 0
2170to turn off.
2171
2172gc_stale_time
2173-------------
2174
2175Determines how often to check for stale ARP entries. After an ARP entry is
2176stale it will be resolved again (which is useful when an IP address migrates
2177to another machine). When ucast_solicit is greater than 0 it first tries to
2178send an ARP packet directly to the known host When that fails and
2179mcast_solicit is greater than 0, an ARP request is broadcasted.
2180
21812.9 Appletalk
2182-------------
2183
2184The /proc/sys/net/appletalk directory holds the Appletalk configuration data
2185when Appletalk is loaded. The configurable parameters are:
2186
2187aarp-expiry-time
2188----------------
2189
2190The amount of time we keep an ARP entry before expiring it. Used to age out
2191old hosts.
2192
2193aarp-resolve-time
2194-----------------
2195
2196The amount of time we will spend trying to resolve an Appletalk address.
2197
2198aarp-retransmit-limit
2199---------------------
2200
2201The number of times we will retransmit a query before giving up.
2202
2203aarp-tick-time
2204--------------
2205
2206Controls the rate at which expires are checked.
2207
2208The directory /proc/net/appletalk holds the list of active Appletalk sockets
2209on a machine.
2210
2211The fields indicate the DDP type, the local address (in network:node format)
2212the remote address, the size of the transmit pending queue, the size of the
2213received queue (bytes waiting for applications to read) the state and the uid
2214owning the socket.
2215
2216/proc/net/atalk_iface lists all the interfaces configured for appletalk.It
2217shows the name of the interface, its Appletalk address, the network range on
2218that address (or network number for phase 1 networks), and the status of the
2219interface.
2220
2221/proc/net/atalk_route lists each known network route. It lists the target
2222(network) that the route leads to, the router (may be directly connected), the
2223route flags, and the device the route is using.
2224
22252.10 IPX
2226--------
2227
2228The IPX protocol has no tunable values in proc/sys/net.
2229
2230The IPX protocol does, however, provide proc/net/ipx. This lists each IPX
2231socket giving the local and remote addresses in Novell format (that is
2232network:node:port). In accordance with the strange Novell tradition,
2233everything but the port is in hex. Not_Connected is displayed for sockets that
2234are not tied to a specific remote address. The Tx and Rx queue sizes indicate
2235the number of bytes pending for transmission and reception. The state
2236indicates the state the socket is in and the uid is the owning uid of the
2237socket.
2238
2239The /proc/net/ipx_interface file lists all IPX interfaces. For each interface
2240it gives the network number, the node number, and indicates if the network is
2241the primary network. It also indicates which device it is bound to (or
2242Internal for internal networks) and the Frame Type if appropriate. Linux
2243supports 802.3, 802.2, 802.2 SNAP and DIX (Blue Book) ethernet framing for
2244IPX.
2245
2246The /proc/net/ipx_route table holds a list of IPX routes. For each route it
2247gives the destination network, the router node (or Directly) and the network
2248address of the router (or Connected) for internal networks.
2249
22502.11 /proc/sys/fs/mqueue - POSIX message queues filesystem
2251----------------------------------------------------------
2252
2253The "mqueue" filesystem provides the necessary kernel features to enable the
2254creation of a user space library that implements the POSIX message queues
2255API (as noted by the MSG tag in the POSIX 1003.1-2001 version of the System
2256Interfaces specification.)
2257
2258The "mqueue" filesystem contains values for determining/setting the amount of
2259resources used by the file system.
2260
2261/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/queues_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2262maximum number of message queues allowed on the system.
2263
2264/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msg_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2265maximum number of messages in a queue value. In fact it is the limiting value
2266for another (user) limit which is set in mq_open invocation. This attribute of
2267a queue must be less or equal then msg_max.
2268
2269/proc/sys/fs/mqueue/msgsize_max is a read/write file for setting/getting the
2270maximum message size value (it is every message queue's attribute set during
2271its creation).
2272
d7ff0dbf
JFM
22732.12 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj - Adjust the oom-killer score
2274------------------------------------------------------
2275
2276This file can be used to adjust the score used to select which processes
2277should be killed in an out-of-memory situation. Giving it a high score will
2278increase the likelihood of this process being killed by the oom-killer. Valid
2279values are in the range -16 to +15, plus the special value -17, which disables
2280oom-killing altogether for this process.
2281
22822.13 /proc/<pid>/oom_score - Display current oom-killer score
2283-------------------------------------------------------------
2284
2285------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2286This file can be used to check the current score used by the oom-killer is for
2287any given <pid>. Use it together with /proc/<pid>/oom_adj to tune which
2288process should be killed in an out-of-memory situation.
1da177e4
LT
2289
2290------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2291Summary
2292------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2293Certain aspects of kernel behavior can be modified at runtime, without the
2294need to recompile the kernel, or even to reboot the system. The files in the
2295/proc/sys tree can not only be read, but also modified. You can use the echo
2296command to write value into these files, thereby changing the default settings
2297of the kernel.
2298------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f9c99463
RK
2299
23002.14 /proc/<pid>/io - Display the IO accounting fields
2301-------------------------------------------------------
2302
2303This file contains IO statistics for each running process
2304
2305Example
2306-------
2307
2308test:/tmp # dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.dat &
2309[1] 3828
2310
2311test:/tmp # cat /proc/3828/io
2312rchar: 323934931
2313wchar: 323929600
2314syscr: 632687
2315syscw: 632675
2316read_bytes: 0
2317write_bytes: 323932160
2318cancelled_write_bytes: 0
2319
2320
2321Description
2322-----------
2323
2324rchar
2325-----
2326
2327I/O counter: chars read
2328The number of bytes which this task has caused to be read from storage. This
2329is simply the sum of bytes which this process passed to read() and pread().
2330It includes things like tty IO and it is unaffected by whether or not actual
2331physical disk IO was required (the read might have been satisfied from
2332pagecache)
2333
2334
2335wchar
2336-----
2337
2338I/O counter: chars written
2339The number of bytes which this task has caused, or shall cause to be written
2340to disk. Similar caveats apply here as with rchar.
2341
2342
2343syscr
2344-----
2345
2346I/O counter: read syscalls
2347Attempt to count the number of read I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like read()
2348and pread().
2349
2350
2351syscw
2352-----
2353
2354I/O counter: write syscalls
2355Attempt to count the number of write I/O operations, i.e. syscalls like
2356write() and pwrite().
2357
2358
2359read_bytes
2360----------
2361
2362I/O counter: bytes read
2363Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process really did cause to
2364be fetched from the storage layer. Done at the submit_bio() level, so it is
2365accurate for block-backed filesystems. <please add status regarding NFS and
2366CIFS at a later time>
2367
2368
2369write_bytes
2370-----------
2371
2372I/O counter: bytes written
2373Attempt to count the number of bytes which this process caused to be sent to
2374the storage layer. This is done at page-dirtying time.
2375
2376
2377cancelled_write_bytes
2378---------------------
2379
2380The big inaccuracy here is truncate. If a process writes 1MB to a file and
2381then deletes the file, it will in fact perform no writeout. But it will have
2382been accounted as having caused 1MB of write.
2383In other words: The number of bytes which this process caused to not happen,
2384by truncating pagecache. A task can cause "negative" IO too. If this task
2385truncates some dirty pagecache, some IO which another task has been accounted
2386for (in it's write_bytes) will not be happening. We _could_ just subtract that
2387from the truncating task's write_bytes, but there is information loss in doing
2388that.
2389
2390
2391Note
2392----
2393
2394At its current implementation state, this is a bit racy on 32-bit machines: if
2395process A reads process B's /proc/pid/io while process B is updating one of
2396those 64-bit counters, process A could see an intermediate result.
2397
2398
2399More information about this can be found within the taskstats documentation in
2400Documentation/accounting.
2401
bb90110d
KH
24022.15 /proc/<pid>/coredump_filter - Core dump filtering settings
2403---------------------------------------------------------------
2404When a process is dumped, all anonymous memory is written to a core file as
2405long as the size of the core file isn't limited. But sometimes we don't want
2406to dump some memory segments, for example, huge shared memory. Conversely,
2407sometimes we want to save file-backed memory segments into a core file, not
2408only the individual files.
2409
2410/proc/<pid>/coredump_filter allows you to customize which memory segments
2411will be dumped when the <pid> process is dumped. coredump_filter is a bitmask
2412of memory types. If a bit of the bitmask is set, memory segments of the
2413corresponding memory type are dumped, otherwise they are not dumped.
2414
2415The following 4 memory types are supported:
2416 - (bit 0) anonymous private memory
2417 - (bit 1) anonymous shared memory
2418 - (bit 2) file-backed private memory
2419 - (bit 3) file-backed shared memory
b261dfea
HK
2420 - (bit 4) ELF header pages in file-backed private memory areas (it is
2421 effective only if the bit 2 is cleared)
bb90110d
KH
2422
2423 Note that MMIO pages such as frame buffer are never dumped and vDSO pages
2424 are always dumped regardless of the bitmask status.
2425
2426Default value of coredump_filter is 0x3; this means all anonymous memory
2427segments are dumped.
2428
2429If you don't want to dump all shared memory segments attached to pid 1234,
2430write 1 to the process's proc file.
2431
2432 $ echo 0x1 > /proc/1234/coredump_filter
2433
2434When a new process is created, the process inherits the bitmask status from its
2435parent. It is useful to set up coredump_filter before the program runs.
2436For example:
2437
2438 $ echo 0x7 > /proc/self/coredump_filter
2439 $ ./some_program
2440
2d4d4864
RP
24412.16 /proc/<pid>/mountinfo - Information about mounts
2442--------------------------------------------------------
2443
2444This file contains lines of the form:
2445
244636 35 98:0 /mnt1 /mnt2 rw,noatime master:1 - ext3 /dev/root rw,errors=continue
2447(1)(2)(3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)
2448
2449(1) mount ID: unique identifier of the mount (may be reused after umount)
2450(2) parent ID: ID of parent (or of self for the top of the mount tree)
2451(3) major:minor: value of st_dev for files on filesystem
2452(4) root: root of the mount within the filesystem
2453(5) mount point: mount point relative to the process's root
2454(6) mount options: per mount options
2455(7) optional fields: zero or more fields of the form "tag[:value]"
2456(8) separator: marks the end of the optional fields
2457(9) filesystem type: name of filesystem of the form "type[.subtype]"
2458(10) mount source: filesystem specific information or "none"
2459(11) super options: per super block options
2460
2461Parsers should ignore all unrecognised optional fields. Currently the
2462possible optional fields are:
2463
2464shared:X mount is shared in peer group X
2465master:X mount is slave to peer group X
97e7e0f7 2466propagate_from:X mount is slave and receives propagation from peer group X (*)
2d4d4864
RP
2467unbindable mount is unbindable
2468
97e7e0f7
MS
2469(*) X is the closest dominant peer group under the process's root. If
2470X is the immediate master of the mount, or if there's no dominant peer
2471group under the same root, then only the "master:X" field is present
2472and not the "propagate_from:X" field.
2473
2d4d4864
RP
2474For more information on mount propagation see:
2475
2476 Documentation/filesystems/sharedsubtree.txt
2477
f9c99463 2478------------------------------------------------------------------------------