For some time now I notice that "ps" gives me some strange output
after some time. When I first invoke it after a reboot, most of
the processes it lists also have their argument list displayed.
But after some time less and less processes have their arguments
displayed, and after a few minutes all of them are only displayed
in brackets. Here is an example display produced a few seconds ago:

  PID TT  STAT      TIME COMMAND
    0 ??  DLs    0:02.04 (swapper)
    1 ??  IWs    0:04.04 /sbin/init 
    2 ??  DL     1:35.52 (pagedaemon)
   41 ??  IWs    0:00.14 (portmap)
   49 ??  Ss     0:07.46 syslogd 
   64 ??  Ss     2:38.16 update 
   66 ??  IWs    0:05.24 cron 
   72 ??  IWs    0:00.54 (lpd)
   77 ??  IWs    0:02.54 (sendmail)
   79 ??  IWs    0:02.78 (inetd)
  111 ??  Ss     6:14.33 SCREEN (screen)
 3422 ??  IWs    0:00.37 (pppd)
  112 p0  IWs    0:18.84 -usr/local/bin/tcsh 
 3771 p0  IW+    0:01.84 elm 
 3773 p0  IW+    0:00.24 sh -c jed /tmp/snd.3771 
 3774 p0  S+     0:14.87 jed /tmp/snd.3771 
  113 p1  Ss     0:37.40 -usr/local/bin/tcsh 
 3776 p1  R+     0:00.23 ps -ax 
  118 p2  IWs+   0:27.75 (tcsh)
  121 p3  IWs+   0:03.35 (tcsh)
  123 p4  IWs+   0:01.53 (tcsh)
 3351 e3  IWs    0:04.45 -tcsh (tcsh)
 3767 e3  IW+    0:00.88 screen -r 

A few minutes ago that "(sendmail)" f.e. looked like "sendmail: accepting
connections" (or something like that). Also some of those processes
(the ones that were invoked more recently) have their argument list
displayed (like that "sh -c jed") but some are only displayed in brackets
(most notably pppd and sendmail).

I'm running a -current kernel around July 6th. And yes, I did replace
libkvm AND the ps binary (I tried with various versions that I got at
the time I compiled the kernel) but I always get the same behaviour. Just
to be sure I grabbed the latest ps and libkvm from ftp.luth.se and
compiled a new (statically linked) ps that produced the same results.

Could somebody please explain to me why this happens? Is anybody
else noticing this or am I doing something wrong?

Blaz

P.S.: This is on NetBSD/amiga.

-- 
  Blaz Zupan, Ljubljanska 19/b, 62000 Maribor, Slovenia
     blaz.zupan@uni-mb.si, 2:380/104.40, GMIZO::BLAZ