sysinfo, load average question

[Augustine Cano]

In article <1990May22.190038.5217 at bagend.uucp> jan at bilbo.uucp (Jan Isley) writes:
>There was some discussion many moons ago about what the numbers mean
>for load average with sysinfo.  Perhaps like everyone else, I thought
>that a load average of 1.0 meant the system was maxed out.  When I
>noticed numbers like 1.05 I did not think too much about it.  However,
>as I type this, I am running the byte benchmarks posted to comp.sources
>a few weeks ago.  I will post the results if it ever finishes.  It has

it will finish in about 6.5 hours.  I also ran them (at night.)  One of the
tests (repeated three times) exhausted the system resources.  The last two
times, there were failed execs galore.  A couple of other things failed due
to minor modifications that had to be made.  One of these days, I'll re-run
the benchmarks.

>been running for many hours now with the usual background stuff going
>on, reading news, a few megabytes of news coming in and going out, etc.
>
>The load average just read: 5.36 4.95 3.90.  Seems a bit high?
>
>Someone want to tell us again what these numbers really mean?

They indicate (if I recall correctly) the load average in the last minute, in
the last 5 minutes and in the last 15 minutes.  Why they are so high, I don't
know (would someone care to enlighten me?)

I have also noticed that the load average numbers generated by sysinfo seem
to get stuck periodically at different values, even when there is nothing
going on.  Does this happen to other people out there?  I thought this was
related to the previous buggy kernel, but I'm now running 3.51m and it still
happens.  The most common values to get stuck at are 0.04, 0.1[34], 0.3[0-4]
and sometimes 0.4?.  Is this a bug in loadavg?  is there a fixed version out
there?
 
>
>jan
> --
>jan at bagend | {..gatech..}!bagend!jan | (404)434-1335 = voice at home
>
>Signature, we don't need no stinkin signature.

Augustine Cano		afc at shibaya.lonestar.org