Undocumented "Solaris Mode" option

[Tom Badran]

Binary package hint: gnome-system-monitor

In Preferences->processes there is an option "Solaris Mode" which has no tool tip or help documentation. My guess is this doesnt even make sense on a linux system and should be removed, or restated/documented to actually make sense.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Aug 15 13:59:30 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-system-monitor
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gnome-system-monitor 2.19.6-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdline: gnome-system-monitor
ProcCwd: /home/tom
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-system-monitor
Uname: Linux vader 2.6.22-9-generic #1 SMP Fri Aug 3 00:50:37 GMT 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=467168

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

If you want to help us in fixing this issue, please take a look to this email: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2007-August/msg00110.html
Thanks in advance!.

[alexrussell (alexrussell101)]

As far as I'm aware, and I don't know a lot, Solaris mode is simply a different way of showing CPU usage. I 'normal' Linux mode you get the % of one CPU (or core or whatever) that a program is using, so two programs that are maxing out one core each of a dual-core system will both show as 100% CPU usage. In Solaris mode, it'll show as 50% each, as the percentages shown are taken as a percentage of all available CPU time.

Basically for a single CPU/core, there should be no difference. On a multi-CPU/core system, Solaris mode shows 100% as 100% or all available CPU time, whereas 'normal' mode shows 100% as being 100% or a specific CPU/core, thus on a quad-core system, the percentages (inc idle) should all add up to 400% on 'normal' and 100% in Solaris.

As I said, I could be wrong but I think that's it. So it's not unnecessary, but it does still need documentation as Tom pointed out.

[Brion Vibber (brion)]

I've posted a patch on the upstream bug which replaces the "Solaris mode" checkbox with a combo box listing the two alternatives more descriptively.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=467168#c5

[Dmitri Bachtin (damg)]

As of 11.10b2, the fix is in gnome-system-monitor. Marking as fix released.