The Process File System (PROCFS) resides in memory. It contains a list of active processes, by process number, in the /proc directory. Information in the /proc directory is used by commands like ps. Debuggers and other development tools can also access the address space of the processes by using file system calls. The following example shows a partial listing of the contents of the /proc directory:
$ ls -l /proc total 144944 -rw------- 1 root root 0 Dec 19 15:45 00000 -rw------- 1 root root 196608 Dec 19 15:45 00001 -rw------- 1 root root 0 Dec 19 15:45 00002 -rw------- 1 root root 1028096 Dec 19 15:46 00073 -rw------- 1 root root 1445888 Dec 19 15:46 00091 -rw------- 1 root root 1142784 Dec 19 15:46 00093 -rw------- 1 root root 1142784 Dec 19 15:46 00095 -rw------- 1 ignatz staff 1576960 Dec 19 15:50 00226 -rw------- 1 ignatz staff 192512 Dec 19 15:51 00236 -rw------- 1 ignatz staff 1269760 Dec 19 15:52 00240 -rw------- 1 ignatz staff 6090752 Dec 19 15:52 00241 -rw------- 1 ignatz staff 188416 Dec 19 15:52 00247 -rw------- 1 ignatz staff 2744320 Dec 19 15:52 00256
Do not delete the files in the /proc directory. Deleting processes from the /proc directory is not the best way to kill them. Remember, /proc files do not use disk space, so there is little reason to delete files from this directory.
The /proc directory does not require system administration.