From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jun 18 22:01:18 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C03B237B401; Wed, 18 Jun 2003 22:01:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp3.server.rpi.edu (smtp3.server.rpi.edu [128.113.2.3]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 102B143F75; Wed, 18 Jun 2003 22:01:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.netel.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by smtp3.server.rpi.edu (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h5J51GiJ017578; Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:01:16 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:01:15 -0400 To: Robert Watson , Poul-Henning Kamp From: Garance A Drosihn Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.28 cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: marking normal sleep identifiers as such. X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 05:01:19 -0000 At 9:33 AM -0400 6/18/03, Robert Watson wrote: >On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > > > Since thread names are longer than the space we have in ps(1) > > output using the thread name is not feasible solution. > > > > I notice that the interrupt threads all seem to sleep on "-", > > and all things considered, I like that. > > >> Should we adopt that as our convention ? > >I agree with the concern -- I've similarly noticed an increase >in the amount of time I spend diagnosing apparent deadlocks as >I attempt to determine if kernel threads are simply idle, or >stuck on locks. I don't really mind what the convention is; >"-" is probably as good as any. Another possible convention >would be to name the state fooidle -- i.e., pageridle, acpiidle, ... Long ago and in an operating-system far away (and which is not running anywhere now), we had a similar problem. We ended up adding a mechanism here the sleeper could specify a character string which would show up in our equivalent of 'ps'. This was implemented by having one hardware register which held the address of the string to display. Perhaps something similar could be done in freebsd. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu