'ps' is too slow

Mark H. Colburn colburn at io.SRC.Honeywell.COM
Sat Mar 11 05:21:17 AEST 1989


In article <1119 at auspex.UUCP> guy at auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
+>In DG/UX, as of 4.00, there is a system call "dg_process_info", which
+>returns just about everything you'd want from a 'ps'.  You can specify
+>a uid, pid, tty, pgrp or 'all' (the -u, -p, -t, -g and -e options) to
+>to limit the processes returned.  You just sit in a loop for as long as 
+>the call returns 1.
+
+S5R4 will probably do something similar with "/proc".  Basically, the
+loop will probably look something like:

The SunOS 4.0 release has a fast version of PS.  The first time I ran it I
was waiting for it to start as all the information scrolled off the
screen...  Whether this will be in later versions of S5r4 or not, I don't
know, but, as usuall, Guy's prediction is probably accurate.

I believe that Sun does the fast ps by cacheing all of the process status
information in the kernel, rather than having to read /etc/utmp, etc.

Mark H. Colburn           MN65-2300		colburn at SRC.Honeywell.COM
Systems Administration and Support
Honeywell Systems & Research Center



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