On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 10:18 PM, Lists <lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote: > On 04/20/2012 05:24 AM, Giovanni Tirloni wrote: > > On Apr 20, 2012 2:42 AM, "Lists"<lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote: > >> Problem as follows: > >> > >> 1) Plug in an external USB drive. > >> > >> 2) Mount it anywhere. Doesn't matter how. > >> > >> 3) Copy a few GB of data to the drive from a non-USB disk. > >> > >> 4) Watch the load average "climb" to 5.x, sometimes 10.x or more. Why? > >> This on an otherwise unloaded system. Doesn't matter how many cores, how > >> much RAM, 32/64 bit, etc. > >> > >> Why should copying some files to a USB drive cause load averages to > >> climb so high? (and network monitors to freak out?) > > It's just a number. Is the system any slower? > > > > Linux adds I/O wait time to the load average calculation. > > Problem isn't so much actual "speed" but causing network monitors to > freak out due to "high" load average > when performing backups. I can make exceptions for servers doing > backups, but then I don't get notifications when > the load is legitimately high. I can make exceptions only during backup > times, but that increases complexity. > > Seems silly that load average would climb to 2.x or more copying some > files on an otherwise lightly loaded server. > > You might be better off monitoring CPU usage instead of load average in Linux. -- Giovanni