Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 22:05:38 -0400 From: Joe Altman <fj@panix.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: On 5.1, what is the process named "idle"? Message-ID: <20030912020538.GA22921@panix.com> In-Reply-To: <20030912005001.GD8251@rot13.obsecurity.org> References: <20030912000405.GA5982@panix.com> <20030912003951.GA2226@plewe.is.tsukuba.ac.jp> <20030912005001.GD8251@rot13.obsecurity.org>
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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 05:50:01PM -0700, Kris Kennaway wrote: > On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 09:39:51AM +0900, Till Plewe wrote: > > On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 08:04:05PM -0400, Joe Altman wrote: > > > Greetings, list subsribers... > > > > > > I've installed 5.1 and a variety of apps on a machine, in preparation > > > for a move to 5.1 in the near future, and in the course of playing > > > around on it, I've noticed a process called idle: > > > > > > > ... > > > > > What is idle? > > > > IDLE - an Integrated DeveLopment Environment for Python > > (see www.python.org) > > Heh..no. > > The idle task is the kernel thread that runs when the kernel is not > doing anything else more meaningful like running user processes or > servicing I/O. It takes care of running some low-priority tasks like > pre-zeroing memory pages in preparation for future demand. So, should it be in a constant state of RUN, and consume more than 90% of CPU and WCPU for more than twenty four hours? I suspect that I still do not entirely grok the subtle meaning of the fields CPU and WCPU...it's just that when I see this type of thing on a set of userhosts I frequent, it often results in me or someone else yelling over the wall to the SysAdmin: "Hey, $USERS older-than-dirt perl process is chewing up CPU and bogging down the host...please kill the process!" But I don't notice any stickiness on my machine...so maybe it's no problem. I've taken another look at this, and just noticed that there are tasks with NICE ranging from 52 to -187 in 'top -SU root'...I'm not freaked out by this, but note that I read the man page which indicates that possible values range from 20 to -20. The version runs sweetly, btw; no problems at all. Music, scanning, updates, all that...very smooth. Thanks for the answers, fj
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