[CentOS] vmstat and loadavg disagree about system load

Thu Oct 9 15:52:29 UTC 2014
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Wed, October 8, 2014 11:23 pm, John R Pierce wrote:
> On 10/8/2014 9:00 PM, Mingfei Hua wrote:
>> The first two number of vmstat is running process and blocked process,
>> the sum of the two number should equal to system load. But it's
>> inconsistent in this case.
>
> linux load average counts processes that are doing disk IO or network IO
> as being 'ready'.  they aren't actually running, but neither are they
> waiting on user input ('blocked' per vmstat's version of reality).
>

If I'm not mistaken the "cost" of switching between processes also adds to
system load...

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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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