Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Second Edition

Mounting proc

You will find that on both platforms the ps command doesn't work. This is because the proc filesystem has not been mounted yet. Try mounting it:

 # mount -t proc proc /proc

Now, run ps again, and you will see the process listing.

A refinement to this setup would be to write a shell script that mounts proc, and anything else that needs to be done at boot-up. Then, you could run this script instead of /bin/sh at boot. The following snippet gives an idea of how it would work:

#!/bin/sh/bin/mount -t proc proc /proc# Other boot-time commands go here/bin/sh

The last line, /bin/sh, launches a new shell that gives you an interactive root shell prompt. Using a shell as init in this way is very handy for quick hacks, for example, ...