Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 13:36:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Jason Borkowsky <jcborkow@tcpns.com> To: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: RE: CPU context switching/load numbers Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.44.0205031334390.75809-100000@bemused.tcpns.com> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.20020503103549.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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> >> > Greetings! I have a FreeBSD-4.5 box that is a specialized server box. It > >> > doesn't run any user processes and only runs a bunch of small, server > >> > efficient processes. > >> > > >> > I have an inconsistency that I am trying to explain. When I do a "w" > >> > command > >> > on the box, I see this: > >> > > >> > 7:31PM up 74 days, 39 mins, 1 user, load averages: 1.12, 0.94, 0.93 > >> > > >> > This says I have a load of 1.12 over the past minute, or, for every > >> > available CPU interval, I have 1.12 processes requesting the CPU. > >> > >> This last bit is where you go wrong. The 1.12 is just for the minute prior > >> to > >> when you ran the command, it has no relation to any previous minutes. Just > >> cause it is 1.12 right now doesn't mean the average load for every minute is > >> 1.12. > > > > But these numbers are over months...I have used an expect script to > > periodically poll the load and vmstat, and save them off to a file. My > > average load over a three month period is about 0.98, but the average CPU > > idle time over the same 3 month period is about 85% idle. > > Yes, and when your script was running, it was runnable, right? So it > artifically inflated the last minute's load. But the script polled only once every 5 minutes, just running an "uptime" and cat'ing it to a file. There is no way this would have instantaneously affected the 1 minute load average, no less the 5 and 15 minute load averages. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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