Tag Archives: filesystem

Debugging, Embedded Linux, Linux Kernel, Linux Programming, SysAd

Exploring Linux procfs via shell scripts

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Very often, while working on a Linux project, we’d like information about the system we’re working on: both at a global scope and a local (process) scope.

Have we not wondered: is there a quick way to query which kernel version am using, what interrupts are enabled & hit, what my processor(s) are, details about kernel subsystems, memory usage, file, network, IPC usage, etc etc. Linux’s proc filesystem makes this easy.

So what exactly is the proc filesystem all about?

Essentially, some quick salient points about the proc filesystem:

  • it’s a RAM-based filesystem (think ramdisk; yup, it’s volatile)
  • it’s a kernel feature, not userspace – proc is a filesystem supported by the Linux kernel VFS
  • it serves two primary purposes
    • proc serves as a “view” deep into the kernel internals; we can see details about hardware and software subsystems that userspace otherwise would have no access to (no syscalls)
    • certain “files” under proc, typically anchored under /proc/sys, can be written into: these basically are the “tuning knobs” of the Linux kernel. Sysads, developers, apps, etc exploit this feature
  • proc is mounted on start-up under /proc
  • a quick peek under /proc will show you several “files” and “folders”. These are pseudo-entries in the sense that they exist only in RAM while power is applied. The “folders” that are numbers are in fact the PID of each process that’s alive when you typed ‘ls’! it’s a snapshot of the system at that moment in time..
  • in fact, the name “proc” suggests “process”

At this point, and if you’re not really familiar with this stuff, I’d urge you to peek around /proc on your Linux box, cat-ting stuff as you go. (Also, lest i forget, it’s better to run as root (sudo /bin/bash) so that we don’t get annoying ‘permission denied’ messages). Of course, be careful when you run as root!!!

For example, to get one started off:

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Linux Kernel, Uncategorized

Inside the MSDOS / FAT Linux VFS Implementation

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A (small) part of the Linux VFS module of the Designer Graphix Linux Internals training programme.

Referenced kernel ver: 2.6.30

Once extracted, see the

 fs/fat

folder.

_Tip:_
For ease of code browsing, do ‘make tags’ (or ‘ctags -R’) in the root folder of the kernel soure tree.

cd fs/fat

Note: Here the focus is on part of the MSDOS – Linux VFS kernel implementation, mainly the disk-related part, i.e., the superblock and inode objects. We don’t attempt to cover the Dcache/dentry, page cache (address operations) and just touch upon the process<–>filesystem relationship stuff (at least for now).

_Tip:_
To gain some insight into the physical structure / arch of the MSDOS (and [v]fat) filesystem, see this page.
The <linux/msdos_fs.h> header mirrors much of this.

For example, the FAT16 boot record (boot sector) structure is nicely seen here; it’s Linux layout is here:
include/linux/msdos_fs.h:struct fat_boot_sector
(can browse it via the superb LXR tool here).

Superblock Setup

In namei_msdos.c:


...
static struct file_system_type msdos_fs_type = {
.owner          = THIS_MODULE,
.name           = "msdos",
.get_sb         = msdos_get_sb,
.kill_sb        = kill_block_super,
.fs_flags       = FS_REQUIRES_DEV,
};

static int __init init_msdos_fs(void)
{
return register_filesystem(&msdos_fs_type);
}
…

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