On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, erik wrote:
> HI,
>
> I have a quick question. I recently was doing several things at once
> and was really taxig my computer, and just for fun, i decided to check
> the load average. Before this, I thought the load average went from 0
> - 1, but, my load average at the time was 1.25. What exactly do the
> load average numbers mean?
>
The load average is a very basic indication of system load, I believe the
exact defination is "How many processes were waiting to run over the last
minute?".
>From the top man page---
This line displays the time the system has been up
and the three load averages for the system. The load
averages are the average number of process ready to
run during the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes. This line
is just like the output of uptime(1). The uptime
display may be toggled by the interactive l command.
---
To get a better idea of system load, check into top, xosview and vmstat.
The load average may spike quite high(3-5), but the system is actually
idle.
Bill Carlson
------------
Systems Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Opinions are mine,
Virtual Hospital http://www.vh.org/ | not my employer's.
University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics |
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