I was reading through ps.1, which has two slightly different options -H Also display information about kernel visible threads. -k Also display information about kernel threads.
It's not at all obvious what the difference between these options might be. >From the log: -------------------- revision 1.77 date: 2011/09/25 00:29:59; author: guenther; state: Exp; lines: +5 -3; Add -H option to show rthreads, hiding them by default Diff from uwe@ -------------------- so slightly more info. Looking at the code, now this is KERN_PROC_KTHREAD vs KERN_PROC_SHOW_THREADS in kvm_getprocs(3). Now KERN_PROC_KTHREAD is documented, but there is nothing about KERN_PROC_SHOW_THREADS. The code around (dothreads) in kvm* doesn't make things really obvious.