On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, Krzys Majewski wrote: > This is just a guess, but maybe you can't. Maybe the cpu is either > 100% busy or 0% busy, depending on whether or not linux is running a > program. After a minute, you can say, OK, a program was running 20% of
It's a good guess. In technical terms the load average is simply the average number of processes in the runnable state over a period of time. You could take an instantaneous measurement of the number of processes in the runnable state, but it wouldn't be a meaningful number. (In fact, this information is already produced by ps - running processes are marked with 'R'). It's entirely possible that a lightly loaded system could have many running processes at any particular moment, or that a heavily loaded system could have few. > the time. Maybe a second is not long enough to say anything > interesting. -chris It depends on what information you are really trying to get. :}