On 9/22/11 10:59 PM, Rodrigo Gonzalez wrote: > On 09/22/2011 04:29 PM, Mark Felder wrote: >> On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:22:43 -0500, Henry M <henr...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> Can someone explain, or point me to correct documentation on what the >>> load >>> average on top/uptime is actually displaying? >> >> Load average is "average number of processes in the run queue" for the >> 1, 5, and 15 minute intervals. If you have a quad core CPU a 4.00 load >> average means you've been keeping the CPU busy at 100%. > Not exactly as I understand it....IO (disk, network or whatever) affects > it too... > It is the number of task waiting in queue to be run....but IO is > important...if 2 processes are waiting for IO and it is completely > saturated they will be kept in queue so load will get higher > I think there are other things that affect load average but are over my > current knowledge... > > Regards > > Rodrigo Gonzalez
Actually, I could be wrong but that is the number of tasks both in the waiting *AND* the running queue. _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"