A recent buglet in the <meminfo> interface, where many
delta values could legitimately be negative, suggested
a review of this module where a minus was forced to 0.
As it turns out, there are two delta items that indeed
could be negative. They involve the current processes.
So henceforth, DELTA_PROC_BLOCKED & DELTA_PROC_RUNNING
will now be allowed to go negative. I believe that all
other items can only grow. But, if we find more later,
at least the adaptation approach has been established.
[ this whole business of checking for less than zero ]
[ harks back to an old kernel anomaly where negative ]
[ tics were sometimes experienced. top was affected. ]
Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net>
In the commit referenced below it was acknowledged the
procps_stat_get() function will intentionally restrict
returned values by excluding DELTA items among others.
Upon reflection that decision seemed rather arbitrary,
and so has now been lifted. And, while the initial use
of a DELTA will return 0, subsequent calls to that get
function will now return the difference (providing one
second, at least, has elapsed between any such calls).
Reference(s):
. reference to design decisions
commit abc71a46ad
Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net>
This commit is just my usual tweaking after an initial
submission, once the dust has settled & some more desk
checking was performed. Here are the changes included:
. get function need not check the 'stat_was_read' flag
( first time in save_sec == 0 so branch always taken )
. some table logic appeared outside the proper section
. cleanup_stack's loop made to work like assign_result
. eliminated an include of procps.h from stat.h header
. removed 'ext_numitems' from the stacks_extent struct
. changed the alignment of three prototypes for stat.h
. reorganized the pointers for 'stacks_extents' struct
. improved types indentation in header for readability
. lastly, some really gratuitous changes made to align
- comments within that private 'stacks_alloc' function
Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net
This commit represents a complete redesign of the stat
interface. Gone are the confusing 8 separate accessors
along with their 2 additional read functions. In their
place we have just 3 accessors, with no read required.
That old interface also suffered an inflexibility with
respect to structures. Now we deal with an unchanging
standard 'result' struct enabling future changes where
the binary interface will no longer need to be broken.
And gone is that former unnecessary typedef, used when
dealing with jiffies. Now the standard C type is used.
Our new API also adds some brand new functionality. If
a caller plans to employ successive 'select' or 'reap'
invocations, then delta values are available (which is
actually only what that top program is interested in).
At some future point a 'sort' function could be easily
introduced to complement the 'reap' function. However,
I saw no need for it at present and so it was omitted.
There were several design decisions which everyone may
not agree with. In support I'll offer these rationals:
. The 'get' function returns a signed long long result
which means a potential loss of some significance. But
I felt the ability to distinguish actual errors (minus
values) from true zero results were worth such a risk.
. The DELTA item enumerators were also made signed and
smaller than their parents. And they are intentionally
grouped as last so as to emphasize those distinctions.
. The SYS type items were excluded from the new 'reap'
function. It would not make sense to duplicate them in
each results stack. They're limited to 'get'/'select'.
. By the same token, some items (DELTA, etc.) will not
be allowed under that 'get' routine. That function was
already open to significant internal overhead (through
subsequent calls like in vmstat.c). That is why it has
been limited via 1 second between reads of /proc/stat.
Lastly, when we finally get around to documenting this
interface there's a real potential toe stubber when it
comes to the numa node portion. The libnuma.so doesn't
really provide any means to retrieve the active nodes.
Thus, any total reported by <stat> is just the highest
node number plus one, as reported by the numa library.
Any unused/inactive nodes are identified through these
. PROCPS_STAT_TIC_ID shows as PROCPS_STAT_NODE_INVALID
By the same token after the STAT_REAP_CPUS_ONLY 'reap'
. PROCPS_STAT_TIC_NUMA_NODE = PROCPS_STAT_NODE_INVALID
Reference(s):
http://www.freelists.org/post/procps/newlib-stat-interface
Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net>
In an attempt to normalize the 'stat' interface, we'll
first shed any reminders of the old readproc interface
by changing file names to be more descriptive & brief.
Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net>
