top columns VCSW and IVCSW

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2007-09-21 21:44, Andreas Pettersson <andpet at telia.com> wrote:
> I couldn't find it in the man page and Google turned up with nothing of
> value so I ask here.
> What does the top (in IO mode) columns VCSW and IVCSW mean?

VCSW = 'Voluntary context switches'
IVCSW = 'Involuntary context switches'

The first type of context switch happens when a process yields before it
has used its allotted time-quantum (i.e. because of an I/O request).

The second type of context switch happens when a process eats up all of
its quantum, and it is forcibly context-switched out of a CPU core by
the scheduler, to let other processes run.

The manpage doesn't document all the ``-m io'' columns, so we should try
to fix it :(