Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Second Edition

Understanding the /proc filesystem

If you cd into the /proc directory of any Linux distro and take a look around, you'll be excused for thinking that there's nothing special about it. You'll see files and directories, so it looks like it could just be another directory. In reality, though, it's very special. It's one of several different pseudo-filesystems on the Linux system. (The definition of the word pseudo is fake, so you can also think of it as a fake filesystem.)

If you were to pull the primary operating system drive out of a Linux machine and mount it as the secondary drive on another machine, you'll see a /proc directory on that drive, but you won't see anything in it. That's because the contents of the /proc directory is created ...