Changing Default Options for proc mount in Ubuntu Linux

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss how to change the default options for procmount in Ubuntu Linux. Procmount is a user-space daemon that provides a filesystem view of the process table. By default, it runs with some options, which might not be suitable for all use cases. In this tutorial, we will explain how to change these options.

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, you need:

• A Ubuntu 22.04 server hosted in the cloud.
• Root access to the server.

Current Situation

By default, procmount is mounted with the hidepid=2 option. This option hides the init process (PID 1) from the proc filesystem. However, in some cases, you might want to see the init process. In this tutorial, we will explain how to change this option.

Changing Default Options

To change the default options for procmount, you need to edit the /etc/fstab file.

Editing /etc/fstab

Open the /etc/fstab file using your favorite text editor:

 sudo nano /etc/fstab
 
 

Find the line that starts with "proc" and edit the options field:

 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
 
 

Change it to:

 proc /proc proc defaults,hidepid= 0 0
 
 

Replace with the process ID you want to display. For example, to display the init process, use hidepid=2.

In this article, we explained how to change the default options for procmount in Ubuntu Linux. We showed you how to edit the /etc/fstab file to hide or display specific processes in the proc filesystem.