procfs

[ajhsu]

TLDR

The proc filesystem is a pseudo-filesystem which provides an interface to kernel data structures.

TLDR Cont.

The proc filesystem (procfs) is a special filesystem in Unix-like operating systems that presents information about processes and other system information in a hierarchical file-like structure, providing a more convenient and standardized method for dynamically accessing process data held in the kernel than traditional tracing methods or direct access to kernel memory.

Fields

Memory

• /proc/<pid>/stat: Status information about the process.
• /proc/<pid>/statm: Provides information about memory usage, measured in pages.
• /proc/<pid>/maps: A file containing the currently mapped memory regions and their access permissions.
• /proc/<pid>/smaps: Shows memory consumption for each of the process's mappings.
• /proc/<pid>/status: Provides much of the information in /proc/<pid>/stat and /proc/<pid>/statm in a format that's easier for humans to parse.

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procfs
• http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/proc.5.html