From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 91839 invoked by alias); 24 Mar 2019 19:16:42 -0000 Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Received: (qmail 91694 invoked by uid 89); 24 Mar 2019 19:16:31 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-3.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,KAM_NUMSUBJECT,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW autolearn=ham version=3.3.1 spammy=HX-Languages-Length:2018 X-HELO: smtp-out-no.shaw.ca Received: from smtp-out-no.shaw.ca (HELO smtp-out-no.shaw.ca) (64.59.134.9) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with ESMTP; Sun, 24 Mar 2019 19:16:30 +0000 Received: from [192.168.1.114] ([24.64.172.44]) by shaw.ca with ESMTP id 88bbhFyuFLdsa88bchwejW; Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:16:28 -0600 Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Subject: Re: [PATCH] default ps -W process start time to system boot time when inaccessible, 0, -1 To: cygwin@cygwin.com References: <20190323034522.9688-1-Brian.Inglis@SystematicSW.ab.ca> <87d0mh5x3u.fsf@Rainer.invalid> <20190323183653.GB3471@calimero.vinschen.de> <874l7tbfh6.fsf@Rainer.invalid> <4dfdfce1-245d-98fe-0c49-890ba8ec8dd4@SystematicSw.ab.ca> <874l7s65yv.fsf@Rainer.invalid> <871s2wm956.fsf@Rainer.invalid> From: Brian Inglis Openpgp: preference=signencrypt Message-ID: Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2019 19:16:00 -0000 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.6.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <871s2wm956.fsf@Rainer.invalid> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-IsSubscribed: yes X-SW-Source: 2019-03/txt/msg00561.txt.bz2 On 2019-03-24 12:15, Achim Gratz wrote: > Brian Inglis writes: >> Boot time is neither magic nor pulled out of thin air. > No, but other than a lower limit of the process start time it has no > correlation whatsoever to the start time of a process that I am not > proviledged to get the start time from. >> Checking *my* system processes using wmic queries and elevated powershell >> scripts, the boot time is at most a few seconds off from process start times >> from other sources. >> I understand that other systems may run processes where that is not the case. >> Please explain why you think this is misleadingly not useful, or where or which >> processes have unvailable start times that are not very close to boot time. > System processes get started and re-started all the time, as do > processes from other users (interactive or otherwise). System processes with more recent process start times seem to make process times available to unelevated processes. Do startup system processes not have this info available to unelevated processes because of some security policy, timing, or possible race conditions with system process and performance monitor startup? > So again: in the case under discussion we _know_ that "0" is a bogus > timestamp value that no process ever got started on, even if it can be > translated to "Jan 1st 1970" if it were indeed a valid timestamp. All > I'm asking is that ps shows something like "N/A" instead of trying to > print something that looks like it might be a valid time, but still > isn't. System startup process start times appear to not be available to unelevated processes, so the process default value is zero. ISTM boot time is a better, more accurate, and useful default for those processes. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada This email may be disturbing to some readers as it contains too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised. -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple