linux-kernel - Re: kernel processes - are they really needed?

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Message-ID: <p73hckgqoxg.fsf@bingen.suse.de>
Date:	Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:43:07 +0200
From:	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>
To:	Ram <vshrirama@...il.com>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: kernel processes - are they really needed?

Ram <vshrirama@...il.com> writes:

> Hi,
>     When i do ps -l. i see the following processes which are obviously
> started by kernel.
>
>    Could any one tell me what each of these processes do 

> and can anyone of them can be removed.?

Some of them can probably. Or rather many depending on the configuration.

Sometimes there are good reasons for an own thread, but often there are also 
bad reasons.

If the threads don't sleep or have special requirements long they
should generally just use keventd instead.

Unfortunately a lot of people seem to think they're cheap because 
it's relatively easy to create them using work queues now, so we end
up with more and more all the time.

Especially on systems with many cores or threads which end up with a
lot of dubious per CPU threads. Some scaling up is needed, but one per CPU 
seems to be generally too many.

My favourite for a ridiculous thread was and is "kpsmoused" 

-Andi
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