What are all these processes in `ps -aux`?

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Nov 11), robg said:
> I have FreeBSD 5.3 running on a remote machine and when doing `ps -aux` I see:
> 
> root    13  0.0  0.0     0   12  ??  WL    4:06PM   0:00.00 [irq1: atkbd0]
> root    14  0.0  0.0     0   12  ??  WL    4:06PM   0:00.00 [irq3: sio1]

Those are all kernel threads; they aren't really processes.  You can
tell the difference because kernel threads have a VSZ of 0.

> What are all of these?  This is a fresh install and I didn't see all
> of those in 5.2.1.. Is there a way to clean them up or are they vital
> to the system?

It may be that ps in 5.3 displays these by default, where 5.2 might not
have.  They were definitely there :)

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com