Understanding Sysfs and Procfs File Systems ​

procfs: The proc File System ​

Files in the /proc directory provide information about processes on your system. The procfs is a virtual filesystem. Some of the files provide information on the hardware running on your system, others provide information and the ability to modify the system configuration.

Typically you can view items on the proc file system using commands such as cat and less, though some specific commands exist to view certain types of hardware and system information (e.g. lspci). To modify items on the proc file system, the echo command is useful along with the redirect operator >.

echo value > /proc/foo/bar

echo value > /proc/foo/bar

sysfs: The sys File System ​

The sysctl utility can be used to view and modify writable files in the /proc/sys directory. In other words, it is used to modify kernel parameters at runtime. The files under sysfs provide information about devices, kernel modules, filesystems, and other kernel components. Most of the files in the sysfs are read only and can be used to understand the system.