Comments on: How to Use /proc File System to Monitor Linux System

By: Ravi Saive

Ravi Saive — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 07:05:33 +0000

In reply to situn.

@Situn,

In the Linux /proc directory, you’ll encounter a mix of files with different sizes including files with 0KB size. However, this doesn’t mean they are empty or lack content, but they are often used as interfaces to kernel data structures, configurations, or real-time information.

By: situn

situn — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 06:32:06 +0000

The /proc directory has 0kb files but there are some files that have some size what are those files?

By: Paul R

Paul R — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 19:45:51 +0000

Minor issue - it's /proc/consoles (with an s at the end). Also you might want to add mention of /proc/self and why this happens:

$ cd /proc/self
$ readlink -e .
/proc/7803
$ readlink -e /proc/self
/proc/11257

By: Ricky Tan

Ricky Tan — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 08:09:58 +0000

Thanks for the info sir.. very much appreciated

By: Rob Krul

Rob Krul — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 09:35:52 +0000

Depending on what type of hardware you have, you can get a lot of information in some of the /proc files. Since you were asking specifically about your video card, you can run:

$ cat /proc/pci

If it is using an ISA slot, you can run the following:

$ cat /proc/isapnp

If you are looking for your hard drive info:

$ cat /proc/scsi/scsi

The man page of /proc/ will give you plenty of info about any file in the /proc directory. Of course, there are easier ways to obtain this information, and utilities that are much more script-friendly. lshw is the first:

$ lshw -class disk

There is also hwinfo:

$ hwinfo --disk

And the very script-friendly lsblk:

$ lsblk -io KNAME,TYPE,SIZE,MODEL

All three of those utilities are available through apt or yum.