Installation guide

34 Chapter 2. The proc File System
(0). The final column states if the module can unload itself automatically after a period without use
(autoclean) or if it is not being utilized (unused). Any module with a line containing a name listed
in brackets ([ or ]) tells you that this module depends upon another module to be present in order to
function.
2.2.22. /proc/mounts
This file provides a quick list of all mounts in use by the system:
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda2 / ext3 rw 0 0
/proc /proc proc rw 0 0
/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
none /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0
The output found here is similar to contents of /etc/mtab, except that /proc/mount can be more
current.
The first column specifies the device that is mounted, with the second column revealing the mount-
point. The third column tells the file system type, and the fourth column tells you if it is mounted
read-only (ro) or read-write (rw). The fifth and sixth columns are dummy values designed to match
the format used in /etc/mtab.
2.2.23. /proc/mtrr
This file refers to the current Memory Type Range Registers (MTRRs) in use with the system. If your
system’s architecture supports MTRRs, your mtrr might look something like this:
reg00: base=0x00000000 ( 0MB), size= 64MB: write-back, count=1
MTRRs are used with Intel P6 family of processors (Pentium II and higher), and they are used to
control processor access to memory ranges. When using a video card on a PCI or AGP bus, a properly
configured /proc/mtrr file can increase performance over 150%.
Most of the time, this value is properly configured for you. For more information on MTRRs and
manually configuring this file, please see http://web1.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.3/doc/mtrr.txt.html.
2.2.24. /proc/partitions
Most of the information here is of little importance to the user, except for the following columns:
• major — The major number of the device with this partition. The major number in our example
(3) corresponds with the block device ide0 in /proc/devices.
• minor — The minor number of the device with this partition. This serves to separate the partitions
into different physical devices and relates to the number at the end of the name of the partition.
• #blocks — Lists the number of physical disk blocks contained in a particular partition.
• name — The name of the partition.