(Related: What do the brackets around processes mean?)
I'd like to really understand what I'm looking at better. I'd rather not need to dig through actual kernel source code just for a quick understanding.
For instance, I looked up kacpid
with initially very little success. Eventually I discovered that it is the kernel ACPI Daemon, and reading up on the Wikipedia page for ACPI clarified in general what that process is all about.
What I would love would be a series of simple definitions, such that looking up kacpid
would give me something like:
kacpid: Stands for kernel ACPI daemon. ACPI is the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, a set of standards relating to handling of various "states" including sleep, power off, hibernate; and also states relating to CPU power saving.
Now I'm trying to look up kblockd
and all the Google results show is people having trouble running out of memory—not very good for understanding why this process exists!
I could just ask "What is kblockd
all about," and I'm interested in that—but:
Given the vast amount of online and off-line documentation relating to Linux (man pages, info pages, POSIX specs, etc.), isn't there a standard solution for the general problem of learning what various kernel processes mean, and what they're doing? What is that standard solution?