From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265825AbUHFMCP (ORCPT ); Fri, 6 Aug 2004 08:02:15 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265879AbUHFMCP (ORCPT ); Fri, 6 Aug 2004 08:02:15 -0400 Received: from mail1.bluewin.ch ([195.186.1.74]:53125 "EHLO mail1.bluewin.ch") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265825AbUHFMCN (ORCPT ); Fri, 6 Aug 2004 08:02:13 -0400 Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 14:01:23 +0200 From: Roger Luethi To: William Lee Irwin III , Albert Cahalan , linux-kernel mailing list , linux-mm@kvack.org Subject: Re: [proc.txt] Fix /proc/pid/statm documentation Message-ID: <20040806120123.GA23081@k3.hellgate.ch> Mail-Followup-To: William Lee Irwin III , Albert Cahalan , linux-kernel mailing list , linux-mm@kvack.org References: <1091754711.1231.2388.camel@cube> <20040806094037.GB11358@k3.hellgate.ch> <20040806104630.GA17188@holomorphy.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040806104630.GA17188@holomorphy.com> X-Operating-System: Linux 2.6.8-rc3 on i686 X-GPG-Fingerprint: 92 F4 DC 20 57 46 7B 95 24 4E 9E E7 5A 54 DC 1B X-GPG: 1024/80E744BD wwwkeys.ch.pgp.net User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org [ fixed linux-mm address ] On Fri, 06 Aug 2004 03:46:30 -0700, William Lee Irwin III wrote: > On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 11:40:37AM +0200, Roger Luethi wrote: > > I discussed this very issue with wli on linux-mm about a year ago. proc > > file and documentation are still broken. So what's wrong with doing > > something about it? > > So now what, you want me to do yet another forward port of > linux-2.4.9-statm-B1.diff? Your call, obviously -- do you think it's worthwhile? I didn't CC you on my initial posting because I wanted to avoid the impression that I am trying to make this your problem somehow. Priorities as I see them are: - Document statm content somewhere. I posted a patch to document the current state. It could be complemented with a description of what it is supposed to do. - Come to some agreement on what the proper values should be and change kernels accordingly. I'm inclined to favor keeping the first two (albeit redundant) fields and setting the rest to 0, simply because for them too many different de-facto semantics live in exisiting kernels. A year ago, the first field was broken in 2.4 as well (not sure if/when it got fixed), but I can see why it is useful to keep around until top has found a better source. Same for the second field, the only one that has always been correct AFAIK. - Provide additional information in proc files other than statm. The problems with undocumented records are evident, but /proc/pid/status may be getting too heavy for frequent parsing. It's not realistic to redesign proc at this point, but it would be nice to have some documented understanding about the direction of proc evolution. Roger