mirror of
https://gitlab.com/procps-ng/procps.git
synced 2024-12-12 03:14:26 +08:00
421b08a4df
We might as well join the coreutils and util-linux projects in correcting our own typos. The following was left unchanged: top/top.c[1797]: thru -> "through" references: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2012-04/msg00057.html http://marc.info/?l=util-linux-ng&m=133518057419736&w=2 Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net>
378 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
378 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
This file summarizes changes to the top program and supporting documentation
|
|
introduced on March 31, 2011.
|
|
|
|
Contents:
|
|
DOCUMENT Changes
|
|
INTERNAL Improvements
|
|
EXTERNAL Improvements
|
|
BUGS Previously Fixed and Preserved
|
|
BUGS Newly/Nearly Fixed
|
|
BUGS/WISH-LISTS That Should Go Bye-bye
|
|
BUGS FIXED You Didn't Know You Had
|
|
OTHER Changes, Hopefully They Won't Bite You
|
|
BENCHMARKS
|
|
|
|
|
|
DOCUMENT Changes =========================================================
|
|
. The entire file was cleaned up, standardized and expanded to include:
|
|
- a new section "2. SUMMARY Display" added for symmetry with Fields
|
|
- nine new fields were added to section "3a. DESCRIPTIONS of Fields"
|
|
- a new section "3b. MANAGING Fields" replaced the obsolete section
|
|
"2b. SELECTING and ORDERING Columns"
|
|
- section "5c. SCROLLING a Window" was added for that new feature
|
|
|
|
. I don't know when the explanations for CODE and DATA were changed to
|
|
show 'virtual' memory, but I think there's a reason their alternate
|
|
names contain the word 'resident'. Thus they were changed back to
|
|
say 'physical memory'.
|
|
|
|
. And as I indicated in a previous email, the former string identifier
|
|
'ME' was restored as were the 'h' key/command conventions (vs. <h>).
|
|
|
|
Oops, the 'h' key/command conventions remain restored, but subsequent
|
|
testing revealed problems with the .ME string identifier. Thus, it was
|
|
changed to .WE (along with the companion .Me/.We id).
|
|
|
|
. Also previously mentioned, the 'man2html' program translates top.1 to
|
|
HTML with near perfect fidelity. I take that to mean there should be
|
|
no problems with the top.1 source on most other platforms.
|
|
|
|
To further improve translation to HTML, several .Bd and .Ed macros
|
|
were added to preserve literal (fixed width) spacing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
INTERNAL Improvements ====================================================
|
|
. The old restriction of 26 fields has been lifted. With this new-top
|
|
100+ fields are now possible. It currently supports up to 55, of
|
|
which 35 are in use. Adding a new field is almost too easy.
|
|
|
|
. Task row construction has been considerably improved -- both from
|
|
a programming perspective and a performance perspective.
|
|
|
|
. The column highlighting costs for sort field visibility were
|
|
virtually eliminated.
|
|
|
|
An optional define (USE_X_COLHDR) can be enabled to completely
|
|
eliminate any costs associated with the 'x' command toggle.
|
|
|
|
. The management of the HST_t structures, used for %cpu calculations,
|
|
was optimized with a hashing scheme. Thus the need for a qsort then
|
|
a binary search in each frame was completely eliminated.
|
|
|
|
An optional define can restore the former qsort/bsearch approach but
|
|
with an internal inlined binary search function offering substantially
|
|
better performance than the old top.
|
|
|
|
. This far more capable new-top executable is no larger than old top.
|
|
|
|
. The above combine to produce substantially improved performance
|
|
whose details are documented below under BENCHMARKS.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EXTERNAL Improvements ====================================================
|
|
. Field management has been completely redesigned. It's now embodied
|
|
on a single screen where display-ability, position and sort selection
|
|
can be handled in one place -- for all windows at one time!
|
|
|
|
This function is dependent on cursor motion keys and should a device
|
|
not have the customary arrow keys, alternatives are provided and
|
|
documented under "Operation" near the beginning of the man page.
|
|
|
|
. The following new fields have been added:
|
|
Group Id
|
|
Minor Page Faults
|
|
Number of Threads
|
|
Process Group Id
|
|
Real User Id
|
|
Saved User Id
|
|
Saved User Name
|
|
Session Id
|
|
Tty Process Group Id
|
|
|
|
. Scrolling keys now allow one to move the view of any window vertically
|
|
or horizontally to reveal any desired task or column. Previously, only
|
|
some tasks were viewable even with reversible, selectable sort columns.
|
|
|
|
Each of the four windows is capable of maintaining its own scrolled
|
|
coordinates and an optional toggle ('C') displays a message aiding
|
|
navigation within the available tasks and displayable fields.
|
|
|
|
. User interactive line oriented input now provides for true line
|
|
editing supported by these new keys:
|
|
Left/Right arrow keys, Delete key, Backspace and
|
|
Home/End keys (likely limited to xterm, not terminal)
|
|
|
|
. User filtering via the -u | -U interactive commands is now window
|
|
based which means that different windows could be used to filter
|
|
different users.
|
|
|
|
. Signal handling has been normalized and is now consistent regardless
|
|
of the particular top screen a user may have been using.
|
|
|
|
. The 'i' toggle now shows any task that has used *some* cpu since the
|
|
last screen update. It's no longer limited to just running tasks.
|
|
|
|
. The summary area 'task states' line now reflects either 'Threads'
|
|
or 'Tasks' depending on the -H toggle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
BUGS Previously Fixed and Preserved ======================================
|
|
( but not necessarily literally)
|
|
. 228822, suspending top leaves xterm in slightly messed-up state
|
|
. 256376, segfaults, if the xterm is to small
|
|
. 320289, segv on sigwinch
|
|
. 351065, wrong highlight 1st column (escape characters displayed)
|
|
. 358724, accepts extra numeric args
|
|
. 378695, seg fault if "/proc" is not mounted
|
|
. 426782, UID field is too narrow
|
|
. 458986, should check xterm for EOF/EIO
|
|
. 459890, Irix mode should use %#4.1f when threads shown
|
|
|
|
|
|
BUGS Newly/Nearly Fixed ==================================================
|
|
. 225542, 'Unknown command' message blocks further commands
|
|
The message is now displayed using usleep for 1.25 seconds, instead
|
|
of the former full 2 seconds. And while it still blocks further
|
|
commands, the delay is much more tolerable.
|
|
|
|
Can we consider this bug 'nearly' fixed?
|
|
|
|
. 410292, interface error when using backspace
|
|
Full line editing was added but could be disabled via a #define.
|
|
And via that define, even under basic termios support, the backspace
|
|
problem was cured.
|
|
|
|
. 567509, top idle command ('i') not working for threaded programs
|
|
Since the 'i' command now reflects tasks that have used *some* cpu,
|
|
and is no longer dependent on an 'R' state, I *believe/hope* this
|
|
bug has been swatted.
|
|
|
|
|
|
BUGS/WISH-LISTS That Should Go Bye-bye ===================================
|
|
. 340751, wish for hostname to benefit multiple top sessions
|
|
Craig's suggestion regarding symlinks is the perfect solution.
|
|
How dare Craig say that the solution was "not ideal" !
|
|
|
|
. 586497, wish for graceful degradation on small screen sizes
|
|
This objective could be accomplished by setting up 2 symlinks for
|
|
top, personalizing them for the 2 tiny phone displays, then writing
|
|
the respective configuration files.
|
|
|
|
I shudder at the programming effort suggested by Paul. And when it
|
|
was done you'd find everybody else would have different criteria.
|
|
|
|
|
|
BUGS FIXED You Didn't Know You Had =======================================
|
|
. Without amplifying the dirty details, the long standing occasionally
|
|
reported display corruption, and an unreported source of performance
|
|
degradation, has been eliminated. The cure is in the elimination of
|
|
the Pseudo_cols variable and the improved PUFF macro.
|
|
|
|
. Line oriented input was not sensitive to screen width. Thus a user
|
|
could hold down any key and ultimately line wrap, overwriting the
|
|
columns header and the entire screen. New top prevents this.
|
|
|
|
. User filtering (-u|-U) via a user ID (not name) now validates that
|
|
number. The old-top just made sure it was numeric, then blindly
|
|
displayed no matching users (i.e. an empty window).
|
|
|
|
. The threads toggle ('H') is no longer window based but more properly
|
|
applies to all windows. The previous implementation produced the
|
|
following aberration if multiple windows were being shown:
|
|
. -H would be acknowledged and applied to all visible windows
|
|
. keying 'a' or 'w' would silently turn it off
|
|
. then keying -H would turn it back on, but the user expected off
|
|
|
|
. If you hit ^Z on any help or fields screen to suspend old-top, after
|
|
issuing 'fg' you would then be left with a seemingly hung application
|
|
inviting ^C. In truth, one could recover with the space bar, but that
|
|
was far from intuitive.
|
|
|
|
. The old-top consistently writes 1 extra byte for each task row or 1
|
|
byte too few for columns headers, depending on your perspective.
|
|
The new top writes the same number of bytes for each.
|
|
|
|
. By failing to clear to eol, old top left the display in a terrible
|
|
state after exiting a 'fields' screen when only a few columns were
|
|
being displayed.
|
|
|
|
. The old-top used a zero value for the L_NONE library flag which could
|
|
cause repeated rebuilding of columns headers with each frame. In truth,
|
|
this was not likely to happen in real life since only two fields actually
|
|
used that flag. However, if it did happen, performance could be degraded
|
|
by 800%.
|
|
|
|
|
|
OTHER Changes, Hopefully They Won't Bite You =============================
|
|
. The undocumented TOPRC environment variable is no longer supported.
|
|
Any similar need can be met through a symlink alias.
|
|
|
|
. The use of environment variables to override terminal size is now
|
|
off by default but could be enabled through '#define TTYGETENVYES'.
|
|
|
|
. The global 'bold enable' toggle is active by default and thus agrees
|
|
with the documentation. It's been wrong ever since Al's wholesale
|
|
'cosmetic' changes in procps-3.2.2.
|
|
|
|
. Task defaults now show bold (not reverse) and row highlighting.
|
|
This agrees with what was always stated in the documentation.
|
|
|
|
. The 'H' toggle (thread mode) is not persistent. Persistence can be
|
|
achieved with a simple shell script employing the -H switch.
|
|
|
|
. Then 'g' and 'G' commands were reversed to reflect their likely use.
|
|
|
|
|
|
BENCHMARKS ===============================================================
|
|
Tested as root with nice -10 and using only common fields
|
|
( on a pretty old, slow laptop under Debian Lenny )
|
|
but rcfiles specified identical sort fields and identical
|
|
settings for the 'B', 'b', 'x' and 'y' toggles (even though
|
|
the defaults are not necessarily identical).
|
|
|
|
In every case new-top outperforms old-top, but I've shown %
|
|
improvements for only the most significant. Those cases mostly
|
|
involve colors with both row & column highlighting. I suggested
|
|
above that the highlighting cost was virtually eliminated in
|
|
new-top, and these tests bare that out.
|
|
|
|
Note the much smaller differences for new-top between the 24x80
|
|
window results and full screen (but don't mix apples_terminal
|
|
with oranges_xterm). This is a reflection of the simplification
|
|
of task row construction, also mentioned above.
|
|
|
|
It's always been the case that any top in an xterm outperforms
|
|
that top under the terminal application, even when the xterm
|
|
provides additional rows and columns. It's true below with
|
|
Gnome and it was true nine years ago under KDE.
|
|
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------
|
|
The following comparisons were run with:
|
|
100 tasks & 160 threads
|
|
-d0 -n5000
|
|
new-top old-top
|
|
xterm 24x80
|
|
a 1 win, lflgs_none 11.2 secs 51.8 secs + 462.6%
|
|
1 win, default 61.0 secs 66.8 secs
|
|
1 win, colors w/ x+y 61.3 secs 83.0 secs + 135.4%
|
|
1 win, thread mode 88.3 secs 94.2 secs
|
|
b 1 win, every field on 99.7 secs 106.0 secs
|
|
1 win, cmdline 71.2 secs 76.6 secs
|
|
4 wins, defaults 101.3 secs 107.2 secs
|
|
4 wins, colors w/ x+y 101.5 secs 122.8 secs + 121.0%
|
|
|
|
xterm, full screen (53x170)
|
|
a 1 win, lflgs_none 15.9 secs 54.2 secs + 340.9%
|
|
1 win, default 70.0 secs 73.2 secs
|
|
1 win, colors w/ x+y 69.4 secs 131.3 secs + 189.2%
|
|
1 win, thread mode 97.6 secs 102.6 secs
|
|
c 1 win, every field on 122.1 secs 128.1 secs
|
|
1 win, cmdline 80.8 secs 83.7 secs
|
|
4 wins, defaults 111.4 secs 115.8 secs
|
|
4 wins, colors w/ x+y 112.0 secs 172.9 secs + 154.4%
|
|
|
|
terminal 24x80
|
|
a 1 win, lflgs_none 8.9 secs 58.6 secs + 658.4%
|
|
1 win, default 70.1 secs 80.3 secs
|
|
1 win, colors w/ x+y 70.6 secs 157.3 secs + 222.8%
|
|
1 win, thread mode 104.7 secs 120.5 secs
|
|
b 1 win, every field on 111.2 secs 134.5 secs
|
|
1 win, cmdline 83.8 secs 94.5 secs
|
|
4 wins, defaults 125.6 secs 146.7 secs
|
|
4 wins, colors w/ x+y 125.6 secs 206.9 secs + 176.7%
|
|
|
|
terminal, full screen (39x125)
|
|
a 1 win, lflgs_none 9.1 secs 60.6 secs + 665.9%
|
|
1 win, default 74.3 secs 88.0 secs
|
|
1 win, colors w/ x+y 73.9 secs 314.5 secs + 425.6%
|
|
1 win, thread mode 113.0 secs 140.9 secs
|
|
b 1 win, every field on 117.7 secs 154.9 secs
|
|
1 win, cmdline 87.4 secs 107.2 secs
|
|
4 wins, defaults 139.1 secs 166.7 secs
|
|
4 wins, colors w/ x+y 157.3 secs 423.2 secs + 269.0%
|
|
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------
|
|
The following comarisons were run with:
|
|
300 tasks & 360 threads
|
|
-d0 -n3000
|
|
new-top old-top
|
|
xterm, full screen (53x170)
|
|
a 1 win, lflgs_none 14.3 secs 79.0 secs + 552.4%
|
|
1 win, default 101.1 secs 104.5 secs
|
|
1 win, colors w/ x+y 101.3 secs 140.0 secs + 138.2%
|
|
1 win, thread mode 120.1 secs 123.1 secs
|
|
c 1 win, every field on 179.8 secs 185.6 secs
|
|
1 win, cmdline 124.9 secs 132.8 secs
|
|
4 wins, defaults 174.8 secs 179.2 secs
|
|
4 wins, colors w/ x+y 175.0 secs 215.2 secs + 123.0%
|
|
|
|
terminal, full screen (39x125)
|
|
a 1 win, lflgs_none 12.3 secs 98.5 secs + 800.8%
|
|
1 win, default 117.4 secs 134.0 secs
|
|
1 win, colors w/ x+y 111.6 secs 296.1 secs + 265.3%
|
|
1 win, thread mode 141.3 secs 155.3 secs
|
|
b 1 win, every field on 197.7 secs 204.8 secs
|
|
1 win, cmdline 143.9 secs 157.3 secs
|
|
4 wins, defaults 204.0 secs 226.2 secs
|
|
4 wins, colors w/ x+y 216.9 secs 434.5 secs + 200.3%
|
|
|
|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
|
|
|
notes:
|
|
a these results represent the library flags L_NONE zero value and
|
|
thus the hidden cost of rebuilding column headers w/ every frame
|
|
b while every common field was turned on, not all fields could be
|
|
displayed due to limited screen width
|
|
c only in a full screen xterm window could all common fields
|
|
actually be displayed
|
|
|
|
|
|
BENCHMARKS, Redux (for NLS) ==============================================
|
|
December, 2011 benchmarks produced on a much more modern
|
|
platform containing:
|
|
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2310M CPU @ 2.10GHz
|
|
SMP with 4 cpus
|
|
reflected in the substantially reduced elapsed times.
|
|
|
|
Tested as root with nice -10 and using only common fields
|
|
but rcfiles specified identical sort fields and identical
|
|
settings for the 'B', 'b', 'x' and 'y' toggles (even though
|
|
the defaults are not necessarily identical).
|
|
|
|
Each test was run outside of X-windows at a linux console
|
|
offering 48 rows and 170 columns. This was done to reduce
|
|
contention which sometimes made comparisons problematic.
|
|
|
|
old-top = procps-3.2.8 (debian patched and memory leaking)
|
|
new-top = procps-ng-3.3.2 with NLS support
|
|
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------
|
|
The following comparisons were run with
|
|
-d0 -n5000
|
|
140 tasks & 275 threads
|
|
|
|
linux console (48x170) new-top old-top
|
|
d 1 win, lflgs_none 2.6 secs 15.0 secs + 577.0%
|
|
1 win, default 16.1 secs 19.3 secs
|
|
1 win, colors w/ x+y 16.6 secs 35.0 secs + 210.8%
|
|
e 1 win, show cpus 16.2 secs 20.1 secs + 124.1%
|
|
1 win, thread mode 31.8 secs 34.1 secs
|
|
f 1 win, every field on 30.5 secs 34.0 secs
|
|
1 win, cmdline 19.9 secs 23.1 secs
|
|
4 wins, default 31.9 secs 35.2 secs
|
|
4 wins, colors w/ x+y 29.2 secs 47.4 secs + 162.3%
|
|
g 1 win, b&w w/ bold x 30.0 secs 33.2 secs
|
|
h 1 win, scroll msg on 31.1 secs 33.9 secs
|
|
|
|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
|
|
|
notes:
|
|
d these represent the same anamoly as the original 'a' footnote
|
|
e these represent the '1' toggle, where each of 4 cpus was shown
|
|
(not possible on the original uniprocessor)
|
|
f every common field was turned on and all fields were visible
|
|
g on a black and white display, sort column was shown in bold
|
|
(further proof of column highlighting improvements)
|
|
h similar to 'g', but new top was showing scroll msg
|
|
(old top has no such provision)
|