Summarry: /proc

Sorry for the late summary ...

Way too many people to thank individually but this is one of the best
responces I received.  

Here's other helpful tips:
Do a "man proc" for more info.

See the man page proc(4).

If you cd into "/proc" and do a "wc -l" you will see you will
have same output as if you do a "ps ef | wc -l". Reason beeing that
every entry into "/proc" is just a running process, in other word
every process running in your system has an entry specified here.

/proc is a pseudo file system pointing into memory - leave it alone.

/proc is a pseudo-filesystem.  It is a file-type interface to the actual
   process datastructures in memory.
It occupies no disk space, so there is no need to get rid of it.

as you can see from your vfstab, /proc is a virtual filesystem
maintained by the kernel.  It doesn't occupy physical disk space
and schedular interfacing utilities (such as ps et al.) relies on
it.

man -s4 proc

remove it at your peril. 
These files do not take up any space as they are a memory based filesystem.
There is a lot of info on /proc out there if you take the time to look, I
reccommend Solaris Internals: Core Kernel Architecture

I also liked the warning, "You'll cry yourself to sleep tonight if you even
consider 
touching it." ...

mha







-----Original Message-----
From: David Evans [mailto:David.J.Evans@oracle.com]
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 11:18 AM
To: Michael Auria
Subject: Re: /proc


Michael Auria wrote:
> 
> Running 2.5.1 .  Looks like /proc/* is used by the OS for processes
> management (& swappingg?).  Can anyone tell me what these files really do
> and if they can be decreased/eliminated ?  Also, if they need to stay, can
I
> put them on a different fs.
> 
> Need the answer fast; no time for reseach; will summarize ...

Its used for file management. When you have time see www.unixinsider.com
and docs.sun.com for more details. 

They are used by the system and other processes as an interface into
an executing program. Removing them will cause your system to fail.

It's a virtual file system that maps into memory - do a "df -k /proc"
and you'll see nothing is used.

That's the short answer -  the long one takes pages. Check this 
groups FAQ for more resources.

        All of the statements and opinions expressed here are my own, 
        and do not necessarily represent those of Oracle Corporation.