Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:13:20 +0000
From:      Alexander Best <arundel@freebsd.org>
To:        Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: CPU report in first line of "vmstat 1" is meaningless
Message-ID:  <20101019001320.GB91234@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <20101018193916.GD5644@dan.emsphone.com>
References:  <20101018174331.GA80017@sandvine.com> <20101018181142.GC5644@dan.emsphone.com> <20101018193010.GA88783@sandvine.com> <20101018193916.GD5644@dan.emsphone.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Mon Oct 18 10, Dan Nelson wrote:
> In the last episode (Oct 18), Ed Maste said:
> > On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 01:11:42PM -0500, Dan Nelson wrote:
> > > Maybe only blank it out on 32-bit machines?  It's a long, and a 64-bit
> > > cp_time value essentially won't roll over (at 1 billion increments per
> > > second it will roll over in 500 years; we currently increment 133 times
> > > per second, I think).  If the value can be calculated accurately, it
> > > should be printed.
> > 
> > Well, it won't roll over, but it's still different from all following
> > lines (in that it effectively shows user/system/idle CPU usage since boot
> > on the first line, and a snapshot over the last interval from then on).  I
> > think it's still better to avoid printing it in that case.
> 
> It is documented to do that, though, and could affect scripts that expect to
> see average-since-boot info on the first line.  iostat does the same, btw.
> 
> > On a related note I'm not sure if it makes sense to have the same
> > behaviour for the first line when an interval is set as when it is
> > invoked with no interval.

...also vmstat seems to exist in a few other OSes (linux e.g). maybe they've
fixed it already (or the netbsd/openbsd/dragonflybsd folks or apple?).

cheers.
alex

> 
> -- 
> 	Dan Nelson
> 	dnelson@allantgroup.com

-- 
a13x



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20101019001320.GB91234>