3.2. Control Flow View Colors
Control Flow View Color Legend
Here is a description of the colors used in the control flow view. Each color +represents a state of the process at a given time. +
White : this color is used for process from which state is not known. It may +happen when you seek quickly at a far time in the trace just after it has been +launched. At that moment, the precomputed state information is incomplete. The +"unknown" state is used to identify this. Note that the viewer gets refreshed +once the precomputation ends. +
Green : This color is only used for process when they are running in user mode. +That includes execution of all the source code of an executable as well as the +libraries it uses. +
Pale blue : A process is doing a system call to the kernel, and the mode is +switched from process limited rights to super user mode. Only code from the +kernel (including modules) should be run in that state. +
Yellow : The kernel is running a trap that services a fault. The most frequent +trap is the memory page fault trap : it is called every time a page is missing +from physical memory. +
Orange : IRQ servicing routine is running. It interrupts the currently running +process. As the IRQ does not change the currently running process (on some +architectures it uses the same stack as the process), the IRQ state is shown in +the state of the process. IRQ can be nested : a higher priority interrupt can +interrupt a lower priority interrupt. +
Pink : SoftIRQ handler is running. A SoftIRQ is normally triggered by an +interrupt that whishes to have some work done very soon, but not "now". This is +especially useful, for example, to have the longest part of the network stack +traversal done : a too long computation in the interrupt handler would increase +the latency of the system. Therefore, doing the long part of the computation in +a softirq that will be run just after the IRQ handler exits will permits to do +this work while interrupts are enabled, without increasing the system latency. +
Dark red : A process in that state is waiting for an input/output operation to +complete before it can continue its execution. +
Dark yellow : A process is ready to run, but waiting to get the CPU (a schedule +in event). +
Dark purple : A process in zombie state. This state happens when a process +exits and then waits for the parent to wait for it (wait() or waitpid()). +
Dark green : A process has just been created by its parent and is waiting for +first scheduling. +
Magenta : The process has exited, but still has the control of the CPU. It may +happend if it has some tasks to do in the exit system call. +