[PATCH] Toggle display of the kernel idle process (per-CPU idle threads) in top

[John Baldwin]

On Friday, May 27, 2011 12:56:42 pm Dan Nelson wrote:
> In the last episode (May 27), John Baldwin said:
> > On Friday, May 27, 2011 11:17:58 am Sergey Kandaurov wrote:
> > > On 27 May 2011 18:46, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > > > Some times in top, I don't want to see all the per-CPU idle threads
> > > > but instead focus on the non-idle threads that are running. 
> > > > Especially on a system with a lot of CPUs, the idle threads can push
> > > > all the interesting threads off of the list.  This patch adds a new
> > > > 'z' flag (gratuitously chosen letter) and interactive command to
> > > > toggle the display of the system idle process.  Patch is tested
> > > > against 8, but should work fine on HEAD too:
> > > 
> > > Works on HEAD as well. I like this idea.  Perhaps it could be combined
> > > with i key?
> > 
> > I couldn't think of a sane way.  There are a few times when I want to see
> > the idle processes, but mostly I don't want to see them and want all the
> > other settings (idle, system, threads, etc.) to be orthogonal.
> 
> Top currently maps both "i" and "I" to "toggle idle processes".  Maybe map
> "I" to "toggle system idle processes"?

Well, top -I is the command line argument for that already (and for
other things like 'H' and 'S' the command line flag matches the
interactive command).  However, I wouldn't want to take 'i' as I know
that's what my brain is hardwired to do to toggle the idle flag.
I figure that at this point it would be too much of a POLA violation to
change either of 'i' or 'I'.

-- 
John Baldwin