[NTLUG:Discuss] Server load average - what is it?

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 06:56:03PM -0500, Richard Geoffrion wrote:
> 'w', uptime, procinfo and others will show a system load average in 1,5, and
> 10 minute increments.
> 
> but what do the numbers mean??? does a 1.00 mean 100% utilization?? if so.
> what does 1.70 mean?  or even 4.77?

The number means the average number of processes that were held waiting
for system resources (usually CPU) during the interval of time.  Thus,
on one of my systems...

[pmichaud]$ uptime
 19:31:24  up 10 days, 23:28,  3 users,  load average: 1.85, 1.82, 1.90

the "1.85" means that during the previous minute there were an average
of 1.85 processes waiting on the CPU.

In my experience, numbers in the 0-2 range indicate a lightly loaded
system, 2-5 indicates a reasonable load, 5-10 indicates a somewhat
heavily loaded system, and anything above 10 means the system is
somehow overloaded (often this can be due to runaway processes or
thrashing).

Pm