Is there a way to see what kernel task is doing?

Question

I found a question (and answers) about What exactly does kernel_task do?. What I want to know is how I can inspect what kernel_task is doing at any given moment in time?

Does it get logged so that I can inspect what is been doing for a while or can I even observe it at realtime?

possible duplicate of What exactly does kernel_task do? – IconDaemon Apr 02 '15 at 18:19 — IconDaemon, Apr 02 '15 at 18:19
That question asks something different than this one – gnzlbg Apr 02 '15 at 18:45 — gnzlbg, Apr 02 '15 at 18:45

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 16 '20 at 20:30

There are few places that information is available, but since kernel is a multitasking beast one has to look in multiple places:

The simple one is the Console log "type kernel in the filter box", but not all activity is reported there since Kernel issues millions of instructions in a Milli-second.
Also the Activity Monitor is a good source of information.
You could use the ps -A > process.txt to see all running processes.
You could use the sudo iosnoop to see all disk activity.
You could use kextstat > ~/Desktop/kexts.txt to see all loaded drivers.

In other words, it is too busy for you to follow and a continuous output file would not make senses.

Is there a way to see what kernel task is doing?

1 Answers1