On Thu, 28 Nov 2024 at 22:50, Stephen Morris <steve.morris.au@gmail.com> wrote:
On 29/11/24 09:45, Will McDonald wrote:
On Thu, 28 Nov 2024 at 22:31, Stephen Morris <steve.morris.au@gmail.com> wrote:
HI,
    When I run IOTOP, the first column is TID, what is TID? This display is showing in excess of 50 entries for Thunderbird where all of them have a unique TID value, is Thunderbird really starting that many threads?

Thanks Will, that is what I thought it might be.
It still begs the question with what it is showing, with me running the upstream daily version of Thunderbird, is it really starting the 50 - 60 threads that iotop is showing?

I don't use Thunderbird but I'd guess it's just the application architecture: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/01/23/thunderbird-will-use-multiple-processes-in-the-future/

How many 'thunderbird' processes is ps showing?

For example, using Firefox for comparison, I have 3 windows open, 7 tabs in total and:

[wmcdonald@fedora ~ ]$ ps -ef | grep [f]irefox | wc -l
22

You could go try and figure out what each of those threads is doing with strace or core dumps, maybe go read through some of the upstream project lists and/or issues? 

Other than 'why are there loads of these' is there a problem? pstree might give you more of an inkling as to how they're being created/consumed.