> I'd really Really REALLY rather not have to try to trigger paging
> activity just to display the start time of a process, something which I
> consider to be critical necessary information at all times, and
> something which NetBSD and sadly now FreeBSD are almost unique in not
> keeping in-core at all times.

Why is the start time so important to you?

> That's the least of my worries actually (though the bigger you make
> struct user, the more memory 'top' would require just to try to watch
> the pot come to a boil, and thus the less likely it would be to ever
> come to a boil if you're watching it with 'top'.... :-)

Not really, the contents of the user area aren't returned verbatum.

> I'm more interested in knowing some of these values even when the system
> is almost completely wedged (even from DDB), and especially from system
> core images after a panic).

You don't often need values from the non-resident process.
Certainly not from ones that haven't run for a while.
(I've looked at enough kernel dumps in my time...)

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk