linux-kernel - Re: taskstats root only breaking iotop

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Date:	Sun, 2 Oct 2011 00:41:59 +0200
From:	Guillaume Chazarain <guichaz@...il.com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Balbir Singh <bsingharora@...il.com>,
	Vasiliy Kulikov <segoon@...nwall.com>
Subject: Re: taskstats root only breaking iotop

On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 11:59 PM, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
> I think the question should be: why is it *ever* a good idea to let
> *anybody* read how many bytes anybody has read.

I use iotop to get the throughput of a cp or tar because I don't
always think of piping to 'pv'. People also use it as a progress
indicator for their less verbose applications (total bytes
read/written instead of rate).

I see on forums people use it to find which process is hammering their
disk, though in this case the time spent on I/Os is more useful than
the throughput and this is not broken by these changes assuming they
have root.

> If you want that kind of detail, do "strace". Don't do that abortion
> that is taskstats.

strace is not always appropriate: it's invasive as it slows down the
traced process and it's not aggregating anything.

> Right now, TASKSTATS is a total and utter disaster.

I'm not attached to taskstats, I'd be happy to migrate to what comes next.

> and it's a crazy idea to
> begin with.

But it's not clear to me if you dislike just the taskstats
implementation or the general idea of precise per task I/O stats.

Thanks for taking the time to explain your reasoning, I'm not trying
to resurrect taskstats, just checking if I should expect a brighter
future for iotop.

-- 
Guillaume
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