Re: OT processes and cpu use

[Tyler Smith <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

On 2007-02-20, Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Tyler Smith wrote:
>> On 2007-02-19, Tyler Smith <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Sorry for reposting, but I should add that my concern stems in part
>> from top reporting that 27% of the CPU is being used by users, and 73%
>> by system, which conflicts with the line item for paup, a user
>> process, which shows 99% CPU use. So I'm not sure if paup is using 99%
>> or 27% of the CPU:
>
> This is not a conflict. There are no such thing as "user processes"
> and "system processes". You are looking at different kinds of breakdown.
>
>> Cpu(s): 26.7%us, 73.3%sy,  0.0%ni,  0.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,
>> 0.0%st
>> 
>>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
>> 14385 tyler     25   0  141m 140m  660 R 99.7  9.3  82:34.35 paup  
>
> What this says is that paup is using all (99.7%) of the CPU, and that
> of this 26.7% is spent executing in user mode, and 73.3% is
> spent executing in supervisor mode. Ordinary programs switch
> the operating mode of the processor by making system calls.
> The time allocated to the process is partly in user mode, and
> partly in system mode. If you read the manual page for "time"
> you'll get a little more information.
>
> HTH
>

Thanks, that does help. I went through the docs for 'top' but didn't
find what I needed.

-- 
Regards,

Tyler Smit