[NTLUG:Discuss] Server load average - what is it?

Terry trryhend at gmail.com
Wed Jun 15 19:34:25 CDT 2005


On 6/15/05, Richard Geoffrion <ntlug at rain4us.net> wrote:
> 'w', uptime, procinfo and others will show a system load average in 1,5, and
> 10 minute increments.
> 
> but what do the numbers mean??? does a 1.00 mean 100% utilization?? if so.
> what does 1.70 mean?  or even 4.77?
> 
> Surely they don't mean 170% utilization.   Maybe it means that the server is
> 70% overutilized.  Or maybe  1.7% of total capacity??  Of course that's not
> the case because at 4.77, my server comes to a grinding crawl.. (three
> dirvish jobs looped each other one weekend....oops.)
> 
> anyway... I've googled for system load average explained..and no one is
> explaining what the numbers MEAN...meaning what the scale is a scale OF.
> 
> thx.
> 
> --
> Richard

Good question....       
Let us read:
  man uptime
uptime gives a one line display of the following information.  The
cur-        rent time, how long the system has been running,  how 
many  users  are  currently  logged  on,  and the system load averages
for the past 1, 5,  and 15 minutes.

Let us also read:
   man top
uptime            
 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  min-             utes.  This line is just like the output
of uptime(1).  The uptime             display may be toggled by the
interactive l command.

-- 
<><




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