proc_kcore(5)

📦
version 6.20 · 10 versions
, in arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

✨ NAME ✨

/proc/kcore — physical memory, bestie 🧠💖

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

💅 /proc/kcore

okay so picture this: there's a file, and it's literally the entire physical memory of the system just sitting there. That's /proc/kcore. It's stored in the ELF core file format, no cap.

And here's the slay part — with this pseudo-file, plus an unstripped kernel binary (/usr/src/linux/vmlinux), you can point GDB at it and go examine the current state of any kernel data structures. Like, any of them. main character energy fr fr 👑

🎀 heads up: the kernel binary needs to be unstripped for this to work — that's the vibe, that's the requirement.

Also the total length of the file is the size of physical memory (RAM) plus 4 KiB. Yes, the whole RAM. Plus a lil 4 KiB garnish on top 🍓✨

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

  • proc(5) — go read it, iykyk 🫶

and that's the whole page!! source: Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2026-02-08, and this was proc_kcore(5) signing off 💜💅✨

📦 where this page comes from
  • arch rolling: man-pages 6.20-1 · BSD-2-Clause AND BSD-3-Clause AND BSD-4.3TAHOE AND BSD-4-Clause-UC AND GPL-1.0-or-later AND GPL-2.0-only AND GPL-2.0-or-later AND GPL-3.0-or-later AND LGPL-3.0-linking-exception AND LGPL-3.0-or-later AND LicenseRef-Public-Domain AND LicenseRef-UltraPermissive AND Linux-man-pages-1-para AND Linux-man-pages-copyleft AND Linux-man-pages-copyleft-2-para AND Linux-man-pages-copyleft-var AND MIT AND Spencer-94
  • nixpkgs unstable: man-pages 6.20
  • 📜 the page's license: GPL-3.0-or-later
  • Copyright 1994-1995, Daniel Quinlan <Daniel.Quinlan@linux.org>
  • Copyright 2002-2017, Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
  • 💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms