From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Mar 10 15:26:27 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA26720 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 15:26:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from stage1.thirdage.com (stage1.ThirdAge.com [204.74.82.151]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA26664 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 15:26:08 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jal@42is.com) Received: from goober (gigi.ThirdAge.com [204.74.82.169]) by stage1.thirdage.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA25912 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 15:22:50 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980310152257.00a5b3c0@colonel.42inc.com> X-Sender: jal@colonel.42inc.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 15:22:57 -0800 To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: Jamie Lawrence Subject: Load Averages: what exactly do they mean? In-Reply-To: <19980306164853.AAA27430@stimpy> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi - >From my reading of Design and Implementation of BSD4.4 my understanding of the load average calculation is that it is the total of the number of processes ready to run or waiting on IO divided by the total number of processes. This implies that it should never go above 1. However, I've seen it bounce above 1 before, and on other BSD variants, it does, too: xxxxxx:~> uname -a ; w | head -1 BSD/OS xxxxxx.xxxxxxxx.com 2.1 BSDI BSD/OS 2.1 Kernel #1: Sat May 25 18:58:46 PDT 1996 panic@xxxxx.xxxxxxxx.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/XANADU i386 6:38PM up 115 days, 8:06, 5 users, load averages: 1.65, 1.55, 1.59 On Solaris boxes I manage, it regularly stays above 1 (in one test situation where an Ultra 1 was being intentionally hammered, it sat between 11 and 12 for hours), but I attributed this to System V strangeness. What exactly is the load average, and how is it calculated? Thanks. -j To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message