Date: 2009jun11 OS: Linux Q. My big find is stuck in /proc -- what can I do? A. Generally you can't grep in /proc /sys and /dev so if you want to search the entire filesystem do this:

find / -path /proc -prune -o /sys -prune -o -path /dev -prune -o -type f -exec grep SOMETHING {} \;

This searches everywhere but /proc /sys and /dev