Bug 436691 - /proc/loadavg consistently mis-report number of total procs
Summary: /proc/loadavg consistently mis-report number of total procs
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: kernel
Version: rawhide
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Kernel Maintainer List
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2008-03-09 13:06 UTC by Vince Schiavoni
Modified: 2008-03-13 05:02 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2008-03-13 05:02:12 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Vince Schiavoni 2008-03-09 13:06:50 UTC
Description of problem:
gkrellm consistently mis-report numbers of running procs

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gkrellm-2.2.10-3.fc7

How reproducible:
Always.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start gkrellm;
2. Enable Built-ins=>Procs;
3. Observe number of running processes reported;
4. Compare with results of top, ksysguard, or any other such tool.
  
Actual results:
Number of running processes reported is consistently and significantly higher
than all other such tools; top/ksysguard/etc. usually agree exactly.

Expected results:
Accurate report of number of running processes IAW top/ksysguard/etc.

Additional info:
uname -a: Linux presario.localdomain 2.6.23.15-80.fc7 #1 SMP Sun Feb 10 17:29:10
EST 2008 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
Linux micron-pc-rb.localdomain 2.6.23.15-80.fc7 #1 SMP Sun Feb 10 17:29:10 EST
2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
Linux etower.localdomain 2.6.23.15-80.fc7 #1 SMP Sun Feb 10 17:29:10 EST 2008
i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
Smolt:
http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/show?UUID=pub_b4a1d9f5-e2fd-4428-86a4-e1839f36e6da
http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/show?UUID=pub_4caba599-039f-4ac7-ae9a-d03c56e839b3
http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/show?UUID=pub_136d9c2b-6c5c-4414-9069-040715716a4c

Comment 1 Hans de Goede 2008-03-09 15:19:02 UTC
I see what you mean, but thats not gkrellm's fault it gets this number from
/proc/loadavg, and that seems to be at fault.

So I'm reassigning this to the kernel.

kernel-maintainers: according to all docs I can find, including:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/ref-guide/s1-proc-topfiles.html

The number after the / in /proc/loadavg should be the total number of processes
on the system, but this seems to be way of, almost twice as much as the actual
number processes (according to top / ps aux)

Vince is your machine a dual core or maybe a hyperthreaded P4?


Comment 2 Vince Schiavoni 2008-03-09 17:14:31 UTC
No.  There are three machines (specs+smolt links above), all three with the same
basic Fedora 7 software, all three with the same symptoms/results:

(1) Compaq Presario SR2020NX (desktop PC), CPU=AMD 64 3500+ (~2.2 GHz, stepped
@1.0/1.8/2.0/2.2 using cpuspeed on-demand service), Linux presario.localdomain
2.6.23.15-80.fc7 #1 SMP Sun Feb 10 17:29:10
EST 2008 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux,
http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/show?UUID=pub_b4a1d9f5-e2fd-4428-86a4-e1839f36e6da;

(2) Micron.pc ClientPro CN, CPU=Pentium III (Coppermine, ~800MHz), Linux
micron-pc-rb.localdomain 2.6.23.15-80.fc7 #1 SMP Sun Feb 10 17:29:10 EST
2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux,
http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/show?UUID=pub_4caba599-039f-4ac7-ae9a-d03c56e839b3;

(3) EMachines etower 466id, CPU=Celeron (Mendocino, ~466MHz), Linux
etower.localdomain 2.6.23.15-80.fc7 #1 SMP Sun Feb 10 17:29:10 EST 2008
i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux,
http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/show?UUID=pub_136d9c2b-6c5c-4414-9069-040715716a4c.

Also, I should note that this condition has persisted for quite a long time
(6+months? 1year?), however, I considered it to be a fairly low personal
priority ans so just now got around to reporting it.

Thanx and Regards,
VJSchiavoni

Comment 3 Chuck Ebbert 2008-03-13 05:02:12 UTC
/proc/loadavg includes threads in the count. If you do 'ps Haxh | wc -l' you
will see the count does match what is in there.


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