What Happens When /proc is not Mounted in FreeBSD5.4?

[Martin McCormick]

	I made a startling discovery when using strace to
trouble-shoot a different problem on a freeBSD5.4 system that has
been running since last October.  Both it and another new 5.4
system had a /proc mount point but no process files.  The mount
point had the May 5 date from 2005 as do most files from that
distribution.

	I mounted /proc the way it is done in fstab for 4.x systems

proc			/proc		procfs	rw		0	0

and there were all the process directories.  The only reason I
had done this was because strace won't work without /proc.
Nothing else had seemed wrong and there hadn't been any
compelling reason to look at /proc until now.

	Would an unmounted /proc make the system run slower since
proc files allow for examination of the operation of the running
processes?  So basically, I have fixed the problem if it really
was one in the first place.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Network Operations Group