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Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:34:04 +0100
From: Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com>
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To: Nikolas Britton <nikolas.britton@gmail.com>
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Cc: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>,
	freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: top
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Giorgos Keramidas wrote:

>On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 03:40:02 -0500, "Nikolas Britton" <nikolas.britton@gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>What do all these things mean, they are from the STATE column in top?:
>>    
>>

>The lowercase names are the names of sleep-events on
>which a process is blocked. 
>

A few of these I think I have figured out over the years but pinch of 
salt please, not a lernel hacker:

>>bo_wwa
>>biowr
>>    
>>
writing to disk.  Other devices too, probably.

>>*proce
>>getblk
>>    
>>
reading from disk.  Other devices too probably.

>>RUN
>>select
>>    
>>
waiting for data to arrive on a socket.  See man select.

>>drainv
>>    
>>
>>*Giant
>>nanslp
>>    
>>
sleeping.  see man 3 sleep

>>pause
>>    
>>
Waiting for signal, I believe.  See man 3 pause.

>>wait
>>    
>>
Waiting for children.  See man 2 wait.

>>kserel
>>ttyin
>>    
>>
reading from a tty.

You missed "piperd" == reading from a pipe.

"lockf" = locked file. See man lockf.

Those have got me through most common situations where I want to know 
what's going on.  kserel is the only common one I have no clue about.

--Alex