From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 10 12:11:19 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from pilchuck.reedmedia.net (unknown [63.145.197.178]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3151337B404 for ; Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:11:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from reed by pilchuck.reedmedia.net with local-esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14GRa9-00079b-00; Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:10:53 -0800 Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:10:52 -0800 (PST) From: "Jeremy C. Reed" To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: what is swapper? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I am working on a non-technical, generic BSD article about special system processes. I am trying to figure out some details about swapper (process 0) -- and I have a few questions. I understand that the "swapper process swaps in runnable processes that are currently swapped out, if there is room." Does anyone have an example or an easy-to-understand description? What is a frame? How is it related to swapper? What is a PCB (pcb)? How is is it related to swapper? Why is process 0 (zero) also called the "scheduler"? Is this the same as the swapper? What does "uao" (maybe "? anonymous object") mean? How is this related to the swapper (or pagedaemon)? On a related note, are there any special system processes other than the swapper, pagedaemon, reaper and ioflush? Where is this well documented? Thanks, Jeremy C. Reed http://www.reedmedia.net/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message