Excessive CPU usage from sysmond

Does anyone know what the sysmond application does on OS X? Lately it has been taking about 25-30% cpu constantly for no apparent reason.

Things I've tried so far:

• Reboot
• SMC reset
• PRAM reset
• Starting up in safe mode (sysmond also sucks up resources there)
• Filesystem check (except for the regular incorrect directory count, no errors or whatever)

For the time being I've just disabled the sysmond plist but I guess it's not completely useless so I'm wondering what it's supposed to do and whether disabling is harmful ;)

What sysmond does on OS X

Watching the CPU usage of sysmond through Activity Monitor is pointless! It turns out that sysmond process is what Activity Monitor uses to get it's readings.

So if sysmond is using lots of CPU, just kill activity monitor for it to stop.

Warning

Increasing the update interval for Activity Monitor dramatically increases the CPU load, that's why I initially never noticed it and see it a lot more right now.

This is what I found on my system

/usr/libexec/sysmond

/usr/share/man/man8/sysmond.8

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.sysmond.plist

It is described as some sort of system/files monitoring.

DESCRIPTION The sysmon.conf file is the main configuration file for the sysmond(man) which monitors systems and services on various machines connected to a network.

The high CPU usages seems related to the columns displayed. As soon as I turn on 'Real Shared Memory' or 'Real Private Memory' the CPU% of the sysmond process jumps from around 3% to above 30% and back again if none of the two is selected.

SYSMOND = System Monitor Daemon - monitors all system activity in background and automated by LaunchD (Launcher Daemon)