Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Quick Search: in
What do all those weird fields in top mean...?
View unanswered posts
View posts from last 24 hours

 
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Other Things Gentoo
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
stdPikachu
Apprentice
Apprentice


Joined: 10 Mar 2004
Posts: 254
Location: UK

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 9:36 am    Post subject: What do all those weird fields in top mean...? Reply with quote

OK, so I have my ass-kicking new workstation running gentoo. As such, I have become another slave to the "what is my system doing and how can I make it do it faster" brigade, which usually boils down to hours of watching top do its thing.

But I'm a bit confused by some of the fields - most notably the CPU states.
us = user, i.e. CPU time used by userspace applications
sy = system, i.e. CPU time used by kernelspace applications (device drivers and such)
ni = nice, i.e. CPU time used by "niced" applications
id = idle time

What do wa, hi and si mean? I've noticed that whenever I run anything from a terminal, "wa" fills up all of my idle time - right now I have a big copy going on. cp is using about 10% of the CPU, 20% is being used by the system and 70% is being used up by "wa", with some occasionally being gobbled by "hi". Does anyone have a clue on what these mean? They're not mentioned in the top manual as far as I can tell, and googling for terms like "top linux wa" is obviously next to useless...!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ebrostig
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva


Joined: 20 Jul 2002
Posts: 3152
Location: Orlando, Fl

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 12:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are they not described in the man-pages for top?

Oh, you do know that the displayed values in top are snapshots and not really all that useful?

Try running top as follows:
top -d .05 (or even better -d .01)

Now you will have an almost realtime update of the disply.

Edit: Ok, you need to look at the man pages for vmstat since it is part of the total CPU information.
wa: Time spent waiting for IO. Prior to Linux 2.5.41, shown as zero.
si: Amount of memory swapped in from disk (/s).
hi is not described anywhere...

Erik
_________________
'Yes, Firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
pavera
Tux's lil' helper
Tux's lil' helper


Joined: 27 May 2002
Posts: 84

PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2005 2:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, si is data swapped in from disk?
Why does my system show 15-25% si usage, and vmstat shows 0 for si, also top shows 0kb of swap used...
My system is not swapping, how come top shows a ton of si usage?
Also I reiterate the parents question, what does hi mean? Its not documented anywhere? I'm using 5% of my cpu on hi, and want to know why.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Other Things Gentoo All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum