34

Chapter 2. The

proc

File System

(

0

). The final column states if the module can unload itself automatically after a period without use

(

autoclean

) or if it is not being utilized (

unused

). Any module with a line containing a name listed

in brackets (

[

or

]

) tells you that this module depends upon another module to be present in order to

function.

2.2.22.

/proc/mounts

This file provides a quick list of all mounts in use by the system:

rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0

/dev/hda2 / ext3 rw 0 0

/proc /proc proc rw 0 0

/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 rw 0 0

none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0

none /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0

none /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0

The output found here is similar to contents of

/etc/mtab

, except that

/proc/mount

can be more

current.

The first column specifies the device that is mounted, with the second column revealing the mount 

point. The third column tells the file system type, and the fourth column tells you if it is mounted

read only (

ro

) or read write (

rw

). The fifth and sixth columns are dummy values designed to match

the format used in

/etc/mtab

.

2.2.23.

/proc/mtrr

This file refers to the current Memory Type Range Registers (MTRRs) in use with the system. If your

system's architecture supports MTRRs, your

mtrr

might look something like this:

reg00: base=0x00000000 (

0MB), size=

64MB: write back, count=1

MTRRs are used with Intel P6 family of processors (Pentium II and higher), and they are used to

control processor access to memory ranges. When using a video card on a PCI or AGP bus, a properly

configured

/proc/mtrr

file can increase performance over 150%.

Most of the time, this value is properly configured for you. For more information on MTRRs and

manually configuring this file, please see http://web1.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.3/doc/mtrr.txt.html.

2.2.24.

/proc/partitions

Most of the information here is of little importance to the user, except for the following columns:

  major

  The major number of the device with this partition. The major number in our example

(

3

) corresponds with the block device

ide0

in

/proc/devices

.

  minor

  The minor number of the device with this partition. This serves to separate the partitions

into different physical devices and relates to the number at the end of the name of the partition.

  #blocks

  Lists the number of physical disk blocks contained in a particular partition.

  name

  The name of the partition.