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Re: safe load average



On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 08:17:11AM -1000, Joseph Dane wrote:
> >>>>> "Kirk" == Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com> writes:
> 
>  Kirk> "Safe"?  I think you should be more interested in CPU states
>  Kirk> than load average.  For example, consider running 50 webserver
>  Kirk> processes, all of which are in an I/O wait state.  Your load
>  Kirk> average may be near 50, but your CPU may be sitting mostly
>  Kirk> idle.  As another example, pretend you're running an RC5 or
> 
> no.  "load average" refers to the average length of the run queue.
> processes blocked on I/O are not on that queue.

The load average refers to the average number of processes that are
runnable or in uninterruptible sleep. The latter usually indicates I/O.

(See kernel/timer.c:count_active_tasks() (in 2.4, at least) and ps(1).)

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]


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