I'm well aware that a CPU is more or less a serial device and things run through it more or less single file. You know what I meant, you just wish to argue for no reason. It's kinda funny that no matter how many times you read something you just don't understand it. Maybe five times will do it.
Load average only tells you how many active jobs there are. Load average only tells you how many active jobs there are. Load average only tells you how many active jobs there are. Load average only tells you how many active jobs there are. Load average only tells you how many active jobs there are. It does not tell you if your CPU is being underworked/overworked. It does not tell you if your CPU is being underworked/overworked. It does not tell you if your CPU is being underworked/overworked. It does not tell you if your CPU is being underworked/overworked. It does not tell you if your CPU is being underworked/overworked. It has nothing to do with how much idle time the CPU has left over. It has nothing to do with how much idle time the CPU has left over. It has nothing to do with how much idle time the CPU has left over. It has nothing to do with how much idle time the CPU has left over. It has nothing to do with how much idle time the CPU has left over. Someone just mentioned using his idle time for a [EMAIL PROTECTED] client. Fire up five of them, even with just one CPU, and you shouldn't notice any difference in the box's performance at all. Even though your load average will be at least 5.0, and likely higher because of the other processes. Unless of course the folding clients use a significant portion of your RAM and this hinders the other processes' RAM usage. Very easy way to prove your theory of a high load average making the box unusable being wrong. But, go ahead, tell me it's not wrong, because a load average of 5.0 is insane. I'll believe you. Honest. On 6/25/05, kama <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You are not really getting the whole truth. Its not how many processes are > using the CPU at once. Read the first lines on the link I posted earlier. > > "What is Server Load Average? > > Server Load tries to measure the number of active processes - taking into > account waiting processes in the queue to access the processors, and also > the current running processes. > > The Server Load Average gives the sum of the average number of jobs in the > queue over the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes. Load average is not a UNIX > command - it is an embedded metric that appears in the output of other > UNIX commands such as uptime and procinfo. " > > Note the word 'queue' in the first sentence. > > If you still are not convinced try this link instead: > > http://www.teamquest.com/resources/gunther/ldavg1.shtml > > The summary of that link specifies: > > 1. The "load" is not the utilization but the total queue length. > 2. They are point samples of three different time series. > 3. They are exponentially-damped moving averages. > 4. They are in the wrong order to represent trend information. > > I cant find any information about the load in the top manpage. But I do > have the description from the manpage from the function that top, w, > uptime and such uses. > > "The getloadavg() function returns the number of processes in the system > run queue averaged over various periods of time. Up to nelem samples are > retrieved and assigned to successive elements of loadavg[]. The system > imposes a maximum of 3 samples, representing averages over the last 1, 5, > and 15 minutes, respectively." > > Maybe you are trying to say the same thing, but you are writing it in a > way that makes it quite wrong. Btw, there is no such thing as "using the > CPU at once". Each process must wait its turn to get kernel resources. The > schedular is trying to do this the best way it can, but its not always > enough, hence the load gets higher. -- Clayton Macleod _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
