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Stephen Kitt
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All the files in /proc are provided by the proc file system, which is described thus in its manpage:

The proc filesystem is a pseudo-filesystem which provides an interface to kernel data structures.

This is a special file system provided by the kernel to provide access to the data it stores, e.g. about the CPU (cpuinfo), about processes (in the numeric directories in /proc, corresponding to each process identifier)...

Other special file systems include devtmpfs and sysfs.

So no, all “virtual” files aren’t device files. Arguably, device files aren’t virtual at all, since device nodes exist as real files; the way they act is not the same as what most people think of as files, but they are files nevertheless.

These questions might help you understand all this better:

Stephen Kitt
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  • 1.4k