Re: [PATCH] Rename "swapper" to "idle"

[Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>]

On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 16:15 -0700, Hua Zhong wrote:
> This patch renames the "swapper" process (pid 0) to a more appropriate name "idle". The name "swapper" is not obviously meaningful and confuses a lot of people (e.g., when seen in oops report).
> 
> Patch not tested, but I guess it works. :-)

Usually a patch not tested will never be accepted no matter how trivial
it is, unless you had to modify a driver to match a new syntax or
something and you don't have the device.  Did you at least compile it?

> 
> Signed-off-by: Hua Zhong <hzhong@gmail.com>
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/init_task.h b/include/linux/init_task.h
> index 41ecbb8..5e3ca4f 100644
> --- a/include/linux/init_task.h
> +++ b/include/linux/init_task.h
> @@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ #define INIT_TASK(tsk)      \
>         .cap_permitted  = CAP_FULL_SET,                                 \
>         .keep_capabilities = 0,                                         \
>         .user           = INIT_USER,                                    \
> -       .comm           = "swapper",                                    \
> +       .comm           = "idle",                                       \
>         .thread         = INIT_THREAD,                                  \
>         .fs             = &init_fs,                                     \
>         .files          = &init_files,                                  \
> -

Yes, swapper is because of historical reasons.  In most text books for
Unix, the initial process on boot up is called "swapper".  Probably
because those early Unix systems had this process handle the swapping
(as kswapd does today).

By doing this, it will probably make Linux out of sync with all the text
books on Unix, so it really is Linus' call.

-- Steve


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