I've answered this before on the list, but here goes again anyway...
In Unix, a user process can be either ready to run or waiting for some
event (eg I/O completion, sleep, etc). The system splits processor
time between ready-to-run processes through the scheduling algorithm
built into the kernel. At any given time, then, one process is
running while other ready-to-run processes are waiting for their turn
on the processor(s). (This is ignoring the kernel itself, which also
uses the processor.)
The three load average numbers are the average number of processes
which were ready to run and awaiting their turn on the processor in
the past 1, 5 and 15 minutes. In other words, a first load average
number of 7 would mean that in the past minute, at any given time, on
the average there were 7 processes which were ready to run but not
running due to lack of processor time.
So in a sense the load average is a measure of the load on the system.
Higher load averages mean that the processor is unable to handle the
demands put onto it by the tasks running in the system. However,
there are no fixed measures for defining what load average is high and
what is low. I personally would start getting worried if a server
under my control was consistently showing load averages higher than,
say, 5; on the other hand, it all depends on what sort of tasks the
server is doing and how fast and often the kernel does context
switches.
Regards,
-- Raju
>>>>> "Shridhar" == Shridhar Daithankar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Shridhar> Vinu Moses wrote:
>> On Saturday 20 October 2001 05:35 pm, Bijoy Paul wrote: It's
>> the average number of process ready to run during the last 1, 5
>> and 15 minutes.
Shridhar> IIRC a load average more than 5 means that system is
Shridhar> heavily loaded. But I didn't believe my eyes when I saw
Shridhar> a web site reporting load average of 405 and still it
Shridhar> was fast and responding. God knows how many CPUs it had
Shridhar> but it was definitely a unix/apache website. I saw it
Shridhar> during a bioinformatics workshop at our company.
Shridhar> Great...
--
Raju Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/
It is the mind that moves
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