7. The /proc File System
TRY INVOKING THE mount
COMMAND WITHOUT ARGUMENTS—this displays the file systems currently mounted on your GNU/Linux computer. You’ll see one line that looks like this:
none on /proc type proc (rw)
This is the special /proc
file system. Notice that the first field, none
, indicates that this file system isn’t associated with a hardware device such as a disk drive. Instead, /proc
is a window into the running Linux kernel. Files in the /proc
file system don’t correspond to actual files on a physical device. Instead, they are magic objects that behave like files but provide access to parameters, data structures, ...
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