Paul Gear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said on Wed, 04 Aug 2004 07:03:12 +1000: > This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) > --------------enig162A5A009C607900848B2DE4 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > Reid Priedhorsky wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > > > /proc/loadavg currently reports the following: > > > > 0.96 0.98 0.78 1/116 23994 > > > > xload also reports roughly the same. > > > > But top and ps both report a nearly idle system (98% idle). What is going > > on? How can I find out what is causing my system to be so busy? > > I've seen load averages of 14 and 16 when the CPU usage was on 10%. The > two are usually, but not necessarily, related. There are certain types > of work where this behaviour will be seen. Even low amounts of I/O to a > slow device, if done by enough processes could cause this.
As a test one day, I mounted nfs over the modem, and ran about 300 processes doing a find over the modem. CPU usage was ~10%, 15 minute load was above 200 :) As opposed to undergrad, where in the last 2 days before the semester project was due, when the lusers discovered they might need to think about *starting* their projects, the load on the 4 poor 8 proc sun boxen would hit 373. We actually witnessed a wraparound at some point, where the load seemed to go down to 8, yet intereactivity was still thouroughly poor. At that time, I tried to help someone track down a missing brace in their C code, so I fired up emacs, waited 8 minutes, pressed C-x h C-M-\ and waited for another half hour before giving up and leaving her to fend for herself :) Oh - and the waiting 5 seconds for your bash *shell* to echo a single character keypress. <shudder>. -- TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/ "Does bacteria culture in coffee cup qualify as pet? Have already givink it name." -- Pitr Dubovich/User Friendly -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]