Cannot open /proc/meminfo

[joneall]

Every now and then -- maybe it's only once per boot -- I get a popup box which says:

Message from localhost:
Cannot open '/proc/meminfo'!
The kernel needs to be compiled with support
for /proc file system enabled!

I have no idea what this refers to. Should I be worried about it?

I'm running Neon 18.04 with KDE 4.14.38.

[Mr.Goose]

As no one else has responded, I thought I'd have a crack. I look-after a number of Kubuntu 18.04 installations and a couple of KDE Neon( v5.14) ones too. Interestingly I have not experienced this on the Kubuntu machines. But both the Neon machines suffer this issue. I also observed that my Kubuntu users don't do much demanding stuff with their machines. However the Neon machines are for my personal use and they get absolutely hammered. Most significantly, I noted that the message generally occurs at times of particularly heavy use, perhaps once or twice a day. I don't notice any other ill effects. Just this random silly error message, saying that ksysinfo cannot read the file /proc/meminfo - and blaming the kernel compilation.

In no kernel expert, but as I understand it, the /proc directory doesn't actually exist, per se.. It is a virtual file system that presents process information as a sort of pseudo-file system. The /proc/meminfo (virtual) file is just plain text, and can be read by doing

cat /proc/meminfo

It can also be opened in Kate and refreshed by hitting the F5 key. This is what I see, typically:-

MemTotal:       16132240 kB
MemFree:          648792 kB
MemAvailable:    3077396 kB
Buffers:          145760 kB
Cached:          4535052 kB
SwapCached:        23352 kB
Active:         11826900 kB
Inactive:        3051956 kB
Active(anon):    9975208 kB
Inactive(anon):  2291564 kB
Active(file):    1851692 kB
Inactive(file):   760392 kB
Unevictable:          32 kB
Mlocked:              32 kB
SwapTotal:       2097148 kB
SwapFree:         478676 kB
Dirty:              1900 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:      10176428 kB
Mapped:          1180384 kB
Shmem:           2068780 kB
Slab:             321596 kB
SReclaimable:     150836 kB
SUnreclaim:       170760 kB
KernelStack:       18832 kB
PageTables:       130724 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:    10163268 kB
Committed_AS:   25409704 kB
VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:           0 kB
VmallocChunk:          0 kB
HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
AnonHugePages:         0 kB
ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
CmaTotal:              0 kB
CmaFree:               0 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
DirectMap4k:     2585088 kB
DirectMap2M:    13897728 kB
DirectMap1G:     1048576 kB

This would suggest to me that meminfo is working and that there is nothing essentially wrong with the way the kernel is compiled, in this context. Now I'm guessing here, but I suspect that for a split second, ksysguard cannot read the (virtual) file quickly enough, because the system is too busy. Instead of waiting, it throws up this silly error message. I would also suggest that it is no more than a minor nuisance and can be safely ignored.

[joneall]

Sounds logical. Thank you. And Happy 2019!

[Mr.Goose]

You're welcome. Happy 2019 to you too! :-)

Further to my last post, there is quite a good section on the "Linux Documentation Project" site detailing the "/proc" directory and how it fits in with the overall Linux File Hierarchy System. You might find it interesting.
http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem...html/proc.html