top under 5.3-RELEASE

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Nov 28), Sean Welch said:
> Through 5.2.1-RELEASE I've been accustomed to seeing the top few
> processes using a % of cpu that correspondes to the % free cpu value
> in the header part of the output.  Ie, if the machine is 20% idle I
> expect to see the process %s to add up to roughly 80%.  This seems no
> longer to be the case under 5.3-RELEASE and I'm rather confused by a
> 0% idle statement with the process %s adding up to only about 15% or
> so.
> 
> The amount jumps around a bit and seems to bear the relationship I
> expect when there is light load, but it looks completely wrong to me
> when there is heavy load (as in compiling a port).
> 
> Can anyone explain this seeming inconsistency to me?

For things like port builds, you end up with a lot of very short-lived
processes (sh, sed, cc, etc).  Those either don't show up in top at all
becuase they have started and exited between the sampling intervals, or
else have not accumulated enough CPU time to register any %CPU (which
is a weighted average over time).

The values should total up better when you have processes that hang
around a bit more.  There was a regression in 5.3's libpthreads that
can make it report 0 CPU, so if you have some CPU-hungry threaded
programs, they may not show up in top at all even though they're using
100% cpu.  libthr and libc_r report CPU correctly.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com