On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 06:09:02AM -0700, RJ45 wrote:

 > I noticed that the reaper process (which I do not know what is it looks
 > like a system process) is using a lot of CPU.
 > I Am actually building STABLE from sources and reaper is using 7% of CPU
 > while the other active processes like cc1 etc are using less
 > CPU. sometimes the cpu usage of reaper bursts to 90% then decreses
 > fastly. Is all this normal? I notices my load averages are quite high even
 > if I Am not using the system and there is no process using the CPU.
 > thanks

Yes, it's somewhat normal.  The reaper is a kernel thread which handles
the parts of process tear-down which cannot be handed by the exiting process
(e.g. freeing the kernel stack).  If you have processes exiting frequently,
the reaper has more work to do.

We could make the reaper have a lower priority, but then you would get into
a situation where the resources of exited processes won't be freed as quickly.

-- 
        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>