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On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 20:49 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 19:18, Chris Mason (Lists) wrote:</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> Sudev Barar wrote:</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> ></FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> > No load average is not just CPU but reflects all parameters. For pure</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> > CPU usage system monitor or similar tool will give better</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> > understanding. Also the processes (or dameons) running will really</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> > determine the expected load average.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> > But as some else said for genera usage 2~3 times x number of</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> > processors is a thumb rule guide.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> > --</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> > </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> I don't think so. I believe, but could be wrong, that load average is </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> the number of processes waiting to execute. Nothing else.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> However, I reserve the right to be wrong.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">It is supposed to be the number of runnable processes (i.e. not</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">waiting on i/o completion) so 1 per processor is busy, higher</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">means something is waiting for CPU. Most programs other than</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">graphics and number-crunching tend to wait more for i/o than</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">CPU, so a load average of 2-3 (x processors) may not reflect</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">noticeable delays.</FONT>
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All of you who have responded have given me good information, and I appreciate it. Altho I don't perceive this machine to *have* a load problem, I was more curious than anything as to what would constitute heavy or moderate loads. This evening, while there were processes active, I did a few tests, one of which was the hdparm -t, and I was quite shocked to see how low the thruput really was, albeit cached. Results were like 18mb/sec where as a few other times during a lighter loading, I/O was what I consider respectable, at 160 +/- mb/ 3 seconds., or approximately 54mb/sec. I also tried a few commands to see what kind of sluggishness was evident, and about the only thing I could really tell a big difference in was deleting messages from evolution, and of all things, logging out. System was *very* slow to log me out, but was about normal when I logged back in. At that time, 7 processes were running, with a load average according to top of 5.4, with 1.4gb memory in use, and 700k of swap, but not actively swapping out. There were a lot of processes that were swapped out, and only a few as runnable. Since the machine only has a single 200gb disk, I suspect part of the sluggishness comes from a bottlenecked disk I/O, just based on so many processes actually in swap.<BR>
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Again, thanks for everyone's input, and thoughts. I have again, learned a thing or 3!<BR>
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Regards,<BR>
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Sam
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