pol wrote:
> Sometimes my laptop appear to be heavily loaded, ('top' reports an average
> around 25; moreover i can hear the fan running, sendmail is 'rejecting
> connections') although the cpu activity is well below 100 % (according
> to 'top') and no swapping on disk is occurring (as i can infer from the
> hard disk monitoring led).
> So what can i do to inderstand iwhat s happening?
> Is 'top' a reliable application?
>
Top is quite reliable. The load average represents how many processes
are ready to run. If everything is trying to access the disk, your CPU
utilization will be low (at least less than 100%) and yet you will have
a high load average since many processes will be stuck waiting for the disk.
-Roberto
--
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature