High nice percentage in top on busybox
 

Hello,

I cant understand the output of my top, specifically the nice percentage at 96.8%.
I know that the nice value of a process is basically it's priority and I think a high nice% means the CPU time is taken running task(s) with high nice value (low priority).
But which process is taking the cycles? my top output is:

Mem: 17284K used, 108368K free, 0K shrd, 5220K buff, 8980K cached
CPU: 0.1% usr 0.3% sys 0.0% nic 99.4% idle 0.0% io 0.0% irq 0.0% sirq
Load average: 0.00 0.04 0.12 1/19 1006
PID PPID USER STAT VSZ %MEM CPU %CPU COMMAND
1006 987 root R 1568 1.2 0 0.4 top
987 1 root S 1568 1.2 0 0.0 -sh
1 0 root S 1564 1.2 0 0.0 init
5 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [khelper]
105 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [kblockd/0]
4 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [events/0]
159 2 root SW 0 0.0 0 0.0 [pdflush]
2 0 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [kthreadd]
3 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [ksoftirqd/0]
116 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [khubd]
119 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [kseriod]
158 2 root SW 0 0.0 0 0.0 [pdflush]
160 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [kswapd0]
161 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [aio/0]
162 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [nfsiod]
163 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [cifsoplockd]
901 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [kpsmoused]
910 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [hid_compat]
916 2 root SW< 0 0.0 0 0.0 [rpciod/0]

its a Vortex86SX SBC:
Linux TESTPS 2.6.29-090522dee #1 Fri May 22 14:24:06 BST 2009 i486 unknown
BusyBox v1.13.2 (2009-02-19 13:51:51 EST)

Anyone understand why this nice value is so high and what it means?

Thanks for any help.

You don't have a high nice usage. the nice usage in your post is 0.0%.

The idle process is 99.4% (i.e. nothing being done)

The first value is for user (0.1%)
the second value is for sys (0.3%)
0.0% for nic
99.4% for idle
0.0% for io
0.0% for irq
0.0% for sirq

CPU: is just the label for that row.

(I don't know where you got 96.8% from)

Du-oh!

Thanks, that makes a lot more sense!

(the 96.8% came from a different top output I was looking at that had my application running that I thought was the cause of the high nice value, then I saw the same problem without my application..)

anyway thanks, I got confused :?

No worries, we all suffer from it now and then :-)