What is /proc/kcore

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 25 March 2006 22:04, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Frank McCormick wrote:
> > The files in /proc don't really exist - they are the
> > kernels representation of the machines hardware.
>
> Yeah, that's why I was surprised to find a huge file there. I
> expect everything in /proc to be either 0kb or 4.0kb.
>
> > Don't worry about 1gb files in /proc.
>
> Ok, thanks. I feel better.
>
> I'm still curious though, what is /proc/kcore? Why does it "look"
> huge when everything else in /proc looks either 0kb or 4.0kb?

It's a link into core memory - your RAM, presented as if it were a 
file. /proc shows the full size so you know how big core is. If you 
suffer a most unfortunate crash and the kernel dumps all memory to 
disk in a core dump, this is the file that gets dumped. If you are 
truly masochistic, you can cat it (as root) to see what it looks 
like. Use cat, not less.
-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five