9 Jan
2015
9 Jan
'15
6:38 p.m.
From: Clem Cole
ps "knew" about some kernel data structures
and had to compiled with
the same sources that your kernel used if you want all the command
field in particular to look reasonable.
Not just the command field!
The real problem was that all the parameters (e.g. NPROC) were not stored in
the kernel anywhere, so if you wanted to have one copy of the 'ps' binary
which would work on two different machines (but which were running the same
version of the kernel)... rotsa ruck.
I have hacked my V6 to include lines like:
int ninode NINODE;
int nfile NFILE;
int nproc NPROC;
etc so 'ps' can just read those variables to find the table sizes in the
running kernel. (Obviously if you modify a table format, then you're SOL.)
From: Ronald Natalie
The user structure of the currently running process is
the only one
that is guaranteed to be in memory ... Any processes that were swapped
you could read the user structure so things that were stored there were
often unavailable (particularly the command name).
Well, 'ps' (even the V6 stock version) was actually prepared to poke around
on the swap device to look at the images of swapped-out processes. And the
command name didn't come from the U area (it wasn't saved there in stock V6),
'ps' actually had to look on the top of the user stack (which is why it
wasn't guaranteed to be accurate - the user process could smash that).
From: Clem cole
IIRC we had a table of sleep addresses so that ps
could print the
actual thing you were waiting for not just an address.
I've hacked my copy of 'ps' to grovel around in the system's symbol
table,
and print 'wchan' symbolically. E.g. here's some of the output of
'ps' on
my system:
TTY F S UID PID PPID PRI NIC CPU TIM ADDR SZ TXT WCHAN COMMAND
?: SL S 0 0 0-100 0 -1 127 1676 16 runout <swapper>
?: L W 0 1 0 40 0 0 127 1774 43 0 proc+26 /etc/init
?: L W 0 11 1 90 0 0 127 2405 37 tout /etc/update
8: L W 0 12 1 10 0 0 127 2772 72 2 kl11 -
a: L W 0 13 1 40 0 0 127 3122 72 2 proc+102 -
a: L R 0 22 13 100 0 10 0 3422 138 3 ps axl
b: L W 0 14 1 10 0 0 127 2120 41 1 dz11+40 - 4
It's pretty easy to interpret this to see what each process is waiting for.
Noel