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Systems & Data Center · Intermediate

/proc Filesystem (procfs)

A virtual filesystem generated by the kernel that exposes process and system information as files under /proc.

Definition

Files in /proc occupy no disk space; the kernel creates their contents on read. Each running process has a /proc/<PID> directory, and files such as /proc/cpuinfo, /proc/meminfo and /proc/sys expose hardware details and tunable kernel parameters.

Example

cat /proc/meminfo shows current memory usage; echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward enables routing at runtime.

Exam tip

Changes written under /proc/sys are not persistent across reboots unless also set via sysctl configuration files.

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