From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Oct 24 18:01:28 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA21397 for freebsd-chat-outgoing; Sat, 24 Oct 1998 18:01:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from implode.root.com (implode.root.com [198.145.90.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA21392 for ; Sat, 24 Oct 1998 18:01:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from xroot@implode.root.com) Received: from implode.root.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by implode.root.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA08820; Sat, 24 Oct 1998 17:31:37 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199810250031.RAA08820@implode.root.com> To: James Higgins cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: another record In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 24 Oct 1998 18:42:56 EDT." <363257F0.5775CAE7@iname.com> From: David Greenman Reply-To: dg@root.com Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 17:31:37 -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org >> The load average on a machine like wcarchive might just as well be a random >> number. It's a composite of both disk and CPU "load" and isn't useful in our >> case for determining the machine's potential. In fact, what is interesting >> is that the load average (which is typically around 25-60 on wcarchive, but >> varies a lot) is so LOW. Don't forget that we have *3500* file downloads go >> on. One might expect the load average to be well into the hundreds. > >This is something that has been in my mind for quite a while. Just >exactly how is the load average on a machine calculated? It seems to >very from OS to OS and I have never really been able to make much sense >of it other than to tell if something really out of the ordinary is >happening on a machine. (ie 6 hits at work and the load average shoots >up I just ran into the daily backup, time to go home) The load average is the average number of processes either waiting for disk I/O to complete or that are currently in a RUN state. We have 37 disk drives on wcarchive, so with an average of only one I/O in progress on each drive, we'd have a load average that would start at 37, and that wouldn't account for any RUNing processes. -DG David Greenman Co-founder/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message