Why doesn't /proc exist in OS X?

Question

What is the reason that /proc does not exist in OS X? I was curious to find file descriptors that a process was using in my Mac. The way I do it in linux is to go in /proc/fd folder of that process.

How do I find what fds are used by a process?

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 29 '14 at 09:27

14

Going back to basics : Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux, OS X is a FreeBSD : Different systems, different way to work.

On OS X you can use lsof to see the open files.

$lsof -p 68180

would show you every files opened by the process with pid 68180.

answered Jan 29 '14 at 09:27

Matthieu Riegler

21,486
11
59
97

11

This post doesn't really answer the question. It states that the reson is FreeBSD, but FreeBSD does have /proc – el.pescado - нет войне Jul 13 '15 at 17:00
7

it does not answer the question. E.g. /proc/cpuinfo or /proc/meminfo - these have nothing to do with lsof. – WestCoastProjects Aug 19 '15 at 21:07
2

macOS isn't based off of FreeBSD, but rather a mixture of BSD and FreeBSD. This chart may be of use. – JMY1000 Feb 21 '17 at 10:46
If you need /proc for machine processing, lsof -F produces machine readable output. See the man pages for its spec. (man lsof on your command line) – Eonil Jul 13 '20 at 02:22

Why doesn't /proc exist in OS X?

1 Answers1

Linked