[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.
--
<><
More information about the Discuss
mailing list