Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 11 Sep 2000 21:01:33 +1100 (EST)
From:      Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
To:        Valentin Nechayev <netch@segfault.kiev.ua>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: load average is 1 when no processes active; etc.
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0009112053420.1011-100000@besplex.bde.org>
In-Reply-To: <20000911122614.A21310@netch.kiev.ua>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, Valentin Nechayev wrote:

> > > `top -I' output:
> > > 
> > > ==={
> > > last pid:   811;  load averages:  1.01,  0.97,  0.67    up 0+00:16:12  23:26:26
> > 
> > This is because the idle process is always running (see "ps lax" outout).
> > Perhaps the bug is that top doesn't show the idle process or other interesting
> > kernel processes like the new interrupt processes.
> 
> top does nothing to determine LA except getting sysctl "vm.loadavg", isn't it?
> ("uptime" and "w" says the same avenrun/LA values.)
> Imho, idle process should not be determined as always running,
> and idle process state should be fixed.

Well, the kernel just doesn't treat it specially, so it gets counted in the
load average.  I'm not sure if the interrupt and other kernel processes
are counted.  Since they do useful work, they should be.  The idle process
does the not so useful work of heating the cpu, since it no longer halts
or runs vm_page_zero_idle().

> > > IP Filter: v3.4.9 initialized.  Default = pass all, Logging = enabled
> > > microuptime() went backwards (1.3891137 -> 0.596214)
> > > microuptime() went backwards (1.3891137 -> 0.596655)
> > > ...
> > 
> > I get these at boot time on one machine but not on another very similar
> > machine, and often after messing around with ddb.  TSC timecounter in
> > all cases.  I think they are not a serious problem or related to old
> > timecounter bugs, but they may be related to old bugs setting `switchtime'.
> 
> What information of my hardware should be reported additionally?

None for this problem.  It's a general problem.

Bruce



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.21.0009112053420.1011-100000>