/proc

/proc is typically a folder that contains information about the running processes. For example /proc/1 will contain information about the process with the id 1, that is always init. The information can be accessed like files, but technically, reading a "file" from this directory triggers a procedure within the kernel.

Historically, /proc has developed to carry other information from the kernel, for example /proc/cpuinfo. That is deprecated, this functionality is going to /sys. You should generally try to use programs accessing this information for you, like hwinfo, lsscsi, lsusb, lspci and so on (see hardware).

=Examples= Read out the command line how the kernel was started (boot parameters) tstaerk@ls3523:~> cat /proc/cmdline root=/dev/hda2 vga=0x31a selinux=0   resume=/dev/hda1  splash=silent Read out CPU information (better do hwinfo --cpu) tstaerk@ls3523:~> cat /proc/cpuinfo