Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 20:51:55 -0600 (CST) From: Ryan Thompson <ryan@sasknow.com> To: "jslivko@4evermail.com" <jslivko@4evermail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Loads on a Web/Shell Server Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0110182037080.211-100000@ren.sasknow.com> In-Reply-To: <20011018202647.133DB37B407@hub.freebsd.org>
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jslivko@4evermail.com wrote to stable@FreeBSD.ORG: > Hello, > > I have a shell/web hosting company (4EverMail Hosting Services) and I > have a little bit of a problem with the loads on my machine. I am > hosting a few IRC servers, eggdrop bots and a few apache websites > (mainly my own), and the loads are already at 0.15 and so on. Load averages confuse a lot of people. 0.15 is quite low. On the server I am logged in to: 8:37PM up 205 days, 17:52, 6 users, load averages: 2.44, 2.51, 2.45 Yet the system (old hardware, too) is still very responsive in a shell, requests over the network, etc, the idle process gets 70-80% of the CPU under normal circumstances, and the disk array LED is only on for perhaps half of the time. I seen systems of load < 1.0 that are essentially ground to a halt, and systems of loads in the teens that smoke along just fine. I can't remember seeing a UNIX machine crap out with a load of 0.15, though! With a load of 0.15, that means that in the large majority of the time, there are NO processes in the run queue.. which means things are happening about as close to "real time" as you can get in a multitasking OS. A small percentage of the time, you might have one or two processes in the run queue, which, in most cases, is really nothing at all. The load averages are, at best, a comparative indication of the change in load of one system over time. Unless your system is really unresponsive, you needn't pay much attention to the load averages. If your system IS really unresponsive, make a note of the load average, and see what is eating all of your resources. Hope this helps, - Ryan > I last CVSupped on September 25th and cannot understand what is making > my system loads go up so high. The only clue that I have is the large > ammount of CPU time being taken by the eggdrop bots and a proccess > called: > > root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ?? DL 2Oct01 31:08.71 (syncer) > > Would that be enough to cause the system to have such high loads? > > Below is a copy of my uname -a: > > FreeBSD equinox.4evermail.com 4.4-STABLE FreeBSD 4.4-STABLE #0: Tue > Sep 25 14:36:10 EDT 2001 > root@equinox.4evermail.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/EQUINOX i386 > > If there are any dmesg bits that you might find useful to look at, > please shoot me an e-mail and I will be more than happy to supply > them to you. Thanks in advance for all your help. -- Jonathan > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message > -- Ryan Thompson <ryan@sasknow.com> Network Administrator, Accounts SaskNow Technologies - http://www.sasknow.com #106-380 3120 8th St E - Saskatoon, SK - S7H 0W2 Tel: 306-664-3600 Fax: 306-664-1161 Saskatoon Toll-Free: 877-727-5669 (877-SASKNOW) North America To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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