On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 20:49 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: 
On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 19:18, Chris Mason (Lists) wrote:
> Sudev Barar wrote:
> >
> > No load average is not just CPU but reflects all parameters. For pure
> > CPU usage system monitor or similar tool will give better
> > understanding. Also the processes (or dameons) running will really
> > determine the expected load average.
> > But as some else said for genera usage 2~3 times x number of
> > processors is a thumb rule guide.
> > --
> >   
> I don't think so. I believe, but could be wrong, that load average is 
> the number of processes waiting to execute. Nothing else.
> However, I reserve the right to be wrong.

It is supposed to be the number of runnable processes (i.e. not
waiting on i/o completion) so 1 per processor is busy, higher
means something is waiting for CPU.  Most programs other than
graphics and number-crunching tend to wait more for i/o than
CPU, so a load average of 2-3 (x processors) may not reflect
noticeable delays.

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.

Again, thanks for everyone's input, and thoughts.  I have again, learned a thing or 3!

Regards,

Sam