From: Paul Lutus <nospam@...>
Date: 2006-10-27T02:40:19+09:00
Subject: Re: simple math question

Rick DeNatale wrote:

/ ...

> By the way, is the actual meaning of user, system, total, and real
> documented anywhere.  I've looked around a few times, and haven't
> uncovered it.  I guess I could try to devine it by reading the code
> for benchmark, but...

System time is time spent outside userspace, e.g. direct kernel calls.
User time is time spent directly executing user code in userspace.

I think total time and real time are self-explanatory, but just in case ...
total time is system + user + kernel overhead not properly accounted for,
and real time is simply an RTC measurement at the end of the process life
subtracted from the same at the beginning. It is expected (in a manner of
speaking) that none of these quantities will add as one would expect.

-- 
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com