On Fri, 13 Mar 2009, Ted Unangst wrote:
On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 9:13 AM, David Vasek <[email protected]> wrote:
Perhaps the man page of w(1) should be changed. Currently it states:
The load average numbers give the number of jobs in the run
queue averaged over 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
which is rather inaccurate or wrong. I suggest the patch below. Please
correct my English if necessary.
why is it wrong? wouldn't a better patch be to fix it?
It is wrong becasue the computed numbers can be different from what is
written in the specification (the man pages). The computed load average
can be high on an almost idle machine and vice-versa. As is described
here:
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=118703405121404
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=93551115818166
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=121849543013236
I guess that this is the cause for all the repeated discussions about high
load average. It can't be fixed without redesigning large portion of the
kernel, if it can be fixed at all and it would definetely be for some
performance trade-off.
Regards,
David
