Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 02:56:39 -0600 From: Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx> To: Mikhail Kruk <meshko@cs.brandeis.edu> Cc: Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx>, stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: top/systat Message-ID: <20010309025639.B19665@cec.wustl.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0103090326150.23474-100000@daedalus.cs.brandeis.edu>; from meshko@cs.brandeis.edu on Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 03:32:10AM -0500 References: <20010309021602.B19563@cec.wustl.edu> <Pine.LNX.4.30.0103090326150.23474-100000@daedalus.cs.brandeis.edu>
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I'm probably going to make an ass out of myself¸ which has certainly happened before. Still, a disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about. Take everything I say with the whole canister of salt. As I understand it, a symbol describes the relative entry point of a function in a given block of code, so that programs know where to find the functions they are looking for. Without symbols, programs have no idea where to find functions in other programs. By removing the kernel's symbols, you are saving some space. However, you are also cutting away anything that isn't absolutely essential to running the system. When you try to run top, it looks for the symbol that represents nlist, and when it can't find it, it doesn't know where to find the nlist kernel function. I'm guessing nlist has something to do with a process list... hence, when top can't find nlist, it throws a fit. Please let me know how wrong or simplistic this understanding is... Now I'm curious, too! On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 03:32:10AM -0500, Mikhail Kruk wrote: > btw this doesn't seem to make sense. I'd appreciate if you point me to > something that would clarify this to me. I don't understand how top and > friends use the symbols in kernel and I feel that I would like to know > that. -- Andrew Hesford ajh3@chmod.ath.cx To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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