Greg Sarsons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Why does the reporting of processes seem to change?
>
> For example, when I reboot and start setiathome it uses idle cycles.
> kpm or top show this as I would expect. kpm showes 99% (niced) and top
> showes 94%. gkrellm does not show it unless I tell it to display
> programs which are niced. This correct. kapm-idled is showing 0.00 at
> this time.
>
> Now after using the computer for a while or doing something what is
> displayed changes. I end up with seeing on the cpu meter of gkrellm my
> cpu use sitting at 60ish% without displaying processes that are niced.
> top has now got setiathome around 40ish%. kapm-idle looks like it is
> using the 60% which all the tools are reporting.
> What could cause this?
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http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s14-1:
1.Why is kapmd using so much CPU time?
(REG) Don't worry, it's not stealing valuable CPU time from
other processes. It's just consuming idle cycles (normally
charged to the idle task, which is displayed differently in
top). Normally, when your system is idle, the system idle
task is run, and this is shown as idle time (i.e. the "unused"
CPU time is not charged to a specific process). With APM
(Advanced Power Management), a special idle task (kapmd) is
required so that greater power saving techniques can be
enabled. So now, the "unused" CPU time is charged to the kapmd
task instead.
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--=-=-=
http://olstrans.sourceforge.net/release/OLS2000-apm/OLS2000-apm.html:
In 2.2 and before, we basically had a hook into the idle loop, so that
if we had APM enabled, we would just tell the BIOS that we're
idle. In 2.3, Linus thought it would be a good idea if we had a
separate power management idle loop, so (he) we invented the
kernel APM daemon and I started getting bug reports about this
process that was using all our time, called kapmd. And if you sat
there just running top on a 2.3 kernel, the top process, if you're
not doing anything else, will be kapmd and it will be using like
85% or 90% or 95% of your CPU time. These people were worried
because it was idle: why is it using all of the time? Well
actually, it's just that the time is getting accounted to that
process. It's not doing anything, it's the idle loop. [26m, 12s]
--=-=-=
--
MandrakeSoft Inc http://www.chmouel.org
--Chmouel
