On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:07:33PM -0700, patrick keshishian wrote: > On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 3:50 AM, Richard Toohey > <richardtoo...@paradise.net.nz> wrote: > > On 3/06/2009, at 10:02 PM, BARDOU Pierre wrote: > > > >> Hello, > >> > >> I have performance issues on a OpenBSD 4.4 firewall. > >> CPU load is OK (always below 50%), but system load is always between 1 and > >> 1.5, it may go up to 2 sometimes. > >> > > [cut] > > > > And what is the actual *problem*? > > > > What is pf failing to do? > > > > Or are you just worried about the numbers? B Search the archives for "high > > load" ... > > just for the record, i have seen a server where its typical load > floats around 0.10 or so, but then something will happen and the > plateau will get bumped to 1.10 and remain there. this was an 4.5 > system. > > I have not identified what "event" caused this. I've seen similar > issue with a couple of linux boxes at work where the load avg plateau > will keep rising: it'll hover around ~3, then say ~6 then ~13. i don't > think the issues are related, but could be caused by similar bugs in > kernel. > > All systems continue to be responsive and it only seems that the > reported load avg value is just bumped by a base value. It is > definitely odd.
Load on linux and load on BSD are two completely different things. On linux I recall load being the number of processes running or blocking, or something based on that. On BSD, load is the number of processes which have (wanted to) run at least once in the most recent 5-second window, with a degradation over time. So, if you have a process that wakes up every 5 seconds and prints the time on your console, you have a load average of 1. Load is not the number of cpu cycles used. A high load is just that: high. It means you have a lot of processes that sometimes run. High load does not mean your performance is going down or whatever: I ran a test today which generated a load of 200, but only used 10% of the cpu and was very responsive. You can't compare load on linux with load on bsd, I'd really appreciate if people stopped comparing apples and oranges. :P If you are interested in the internals of the system: load is the black magic that keeps the scheduling fair compared to the number of processes. Ciao, -- Ariane
