On Fri, 1 Nov 1996, Ale Terlevich wrote:

>  When using the time and top commands, what exactly is 'system' time?

Processor time spent in the kernel on behalf of the program. For example,
running kernel code because of a system call that the program made, or
handling an interrupt which is attributable to something that the program
did or asked for. 

Regards,

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Neil Hoggarth                                 Departmental Computer Officer
<neil.hoggarth@physiol.ox.ac.uk>                   Laboratory of Physiology
http://www.physiol.ox.ac.uk/~njh/                     Oxford University, UK
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+