darwin "ps" display parsing in OS-X Tiger causes all procs to vanish in display

[Brodie, Kent]

Hi guys.   OK, enough asking a million questions (thank you all!), now
it's time for bug reporting.

Systems:  Apple X-Servers.  I have two.    The one running OS-X 10.3 is
fine.    The one running OS-X Tiger 10.4 is being weird.   And I figured
it out.

The symptom on the newer OS is that under the "procs" column, all I see
is the process header line, followed by only a small part of the first
process listed- and NOTHING else.     It looks like this on the web
page:

  PID  PPID USER     STARTED STAT PRI %CPU      TIME %MEM    RSS
VSZ COMMAND
    1     0 root     13Jul06 S

After digging, I figured out what's happening.

OS-X 10.3: (normal)

  PID  PPID USER     STARTED STAT PRI %CPU      TIME %MEM    RSS
VSZ COMMAND
    1     0 root      3Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:00.21 -0.0    244
18072 /sbin/init 
    2     1 root      3Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   4:38.77 -0.0    200
18608 /sbin/mach_init 
   83     1 root      3Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:12.67 -0.0    200
18092 /usr/sbin/syslogd -s -m 0
   89     1 root      3Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:02.68 -0.0    792
29120 kextd
   91     2 root      3Jul06 Ss    31   9.0  80:57.57 -0.0   1040
31328 /usr/sbin/configd
   92     2 root      3Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:00.87 -0.0    892
27888 /usr/sbin/diskarbitrationd
   97     1 root      3Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   1:26.87 -0.0    212
18676 /usr/sbin/notifyd
  112     1 daemon    3Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:00.17 -0.0    144
18084 portmap
..............etc


OS-X 10.4 (procs display is broken)

  PID  PPID USER     STARTED STAT PRI %CPU      TIME %MEM    RSS
VSZ COMMAND
    1     0 root     13Jul06 S<s   32   0.0   0:17.23 -0.0    500
28348 /sbin/launchd
   27     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    63   0.0   0:00.00 -0.0    168
27264 /sbin/dynamic_pager -F /private/var/vm/swapfile
   31     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:06.04 -0.2   3608
30640 kextd
   62     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    31   0.0  54:48.59 -0.1   1208
31572 hwmond
   63     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:00.04 -0.0    600
27844 /usr/sbin/KernelEventAgent
   64     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:51.95 -0.1   1096
28064 /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder -launchdaemon
   65     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:11.21 -0.0    572
27592 /usr/sbin/netinfod -s local
   66     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    63   0.0  53:42.36 -0.4   7400
47040 servermgrd -x
   67     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    31   0.0   0:25.95 -0.0    512
27284 /usr/sbin/syslogd
   68     1 root     13Jul06 Ss    63   0.0   0:10.54 -0.0    732
27684 watchdogtimerd
 ...........etc



It's the first line that's causing the hobbit procs parsing to break.
Specifically, the "S<s" status.     While I don't know enough OS-X tobe
dangerous, I suspect it's a new type of process status under the latest
Darwin.   The "<" in the status is normal, and this is causing the procs
parsing in hobbit to cut off everything beyond that.

    1     0 root     13Jul06 S<s   32   0.0   0:17.23 -0.0    500
28348 /sbin/launchd


This of course makes any procs check useless (in my case,I was checking
for simple things, like "cron", etc - and the test fails of course,
since there's no such (or any other!) process listed..................


---------------------------------------------------------
Kent C. Brodie - brodie at phys.mcw.edu
Department of Physiology
Medical College of Wisconsin
(414) 456-8590