CPU report in first line of "vmstat 1" is meaningless

[Ed Maste]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 01:11:42PM -0500, Dan Nelson wrote:

> Maybe only blank it out on 32-bit machines?  It's a long, and a 64-bit
> cp_time value essentially won't roll over (at 1 billion increments per
> second it will roll over in 500 years; we currently increment 133 times per
> second, I think).  If the value can be calculated accurately, it should be
> printed.

Well, it won't roll over, but it's still different from all following
lines (in that it effectively shows user/system/idle CPU usage since
boot on the first line, and a snapshot over the last interval from then
on).  I think it's still better to avoid printing it in that case.

On a related note I'm not sure if it makes sense to have the same
behaviour for the first line when an interval is set as when it is
invoked with no interval.


-Ed