Comments on: Understanding Linux Load Average – Part 1

By: Understanding Linux CPU Load 资料汇总 | 系统技术非业余研究

Understanding Linux CPU Load 资料汇总 | 系统技术非业余研究 — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:35:49 +0000

[...] Understanding Linux Load Average 谢谢 @jametong 参考：part1 part2 [...]

By: Unix Load Average « Oracle Mine….

Unix Load Average « Oracle Mine…. — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:55:02 +0000

[...] Unix Load Average [...]

By: dong ma

dong ma — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 06:35:34 +0000

hi~i come from china.read your this serious of blog make my mind so clear.but,why don’t u upload your shell scripts?aha,hope u see it

By: Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) command line examples | IT World

Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) command line examples | IT World — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:21:14 +0000

[...] Understanding Linux Load Average – Part 1 [...]

By: Fabrice Bacchella

Fabrice Bacchella — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:56:17 +0000

vmstat/iostat are usefuls tools. There is a lot of values in /proc too. There is just two of them than one should never use because they where haven’t be upgraded from IDE and mono core computers :
-load average.
-svctm in iostat -x.
But they are wrong only on linux. BSD/Solaris make them right.

By: Harald van Breederode

Harald van Breederode — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:16:29 +0000

Hi Fabrice,

Thanx for sharing your opinion. Besides telling me what I shouldn’t use, you may as well tell me what to use instead.
-Harald

By: Fabrice Bacchella

Fabrice Bacchella — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:59:45 +0000

I don’t understand why peoples keep using such a broken indicator. It add values that count on unit (number on process waiting for cores) and values that can count in tens or hundreds (number of process waiting for IO). So a value of 10 can be on the same machine a non issue (10 IO waiting for disks) or a big load (10 process wainting for CPU).
It was designed for computers with one core and one IDE disk, both components being mono-tasked. Those times are gone by now.

By: Harald van Breederode

Harald van Breederode — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:10:29 +0000

Hi Tom,

Thanx for the pointer to another load average article. However that article states that the load average is only affected by CPU utilization. Which is clearly not the case. This is a common misunderstanding hence my postings on this subject.
-Harald

By: Tom Bouwman

Tom Bouwman — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:05:54 +0000

Here is another good article on load of Linux systems:
http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averages

By: dincer salih kurnaz

dincer salih kurnaz — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:21:04 +0000

I use to measure the load atop and iostat

Dinçer

By: Harald van Breederode

Harald van Breederode — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:06:15 +0000

Hi Amir,

Yes, that is correct. On Linux the run queue shows the number of running (and waiting) processes. I haven’t verified your statement about Solaris but I believe this is indeed true. I haven’t looked at Solaris for a very long time ;-) But if my memory serves me correct interpreting load average on Solaris is quite different.
-Harald

By: Amir Hameed

Amir Hameed — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:47:05 +0000

It seems that the CPU run-queue is reported differently on Linux than on Solaris. If I am interpreting it correctly, on Linux, run-queue shows the actually number of running processes. On Solaris, run-queue shows the number of processes that are not running yet but are waiting to be put on the CPU. I ran the same test, as shown above, on my Solaris server and the run-queue starts to show a value of greater than zero when the number of load processes increased the number of CPUs on the server.

By: Log Buffer #269, A Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs | The Pythian Blog

Log Buffer #269, A Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs | The Pythian Blog — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:01:25 +0000

[...] is the meaning of load average and when is it too high? Harald van Breederode has the [...]

By: Harald van Breederode

Harald van Breederode — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:27:46 +0000

Hi Kevin,

You are absulutly right! I made a typo while entering the comment. The ; should be a :. I’ve corrected it right away.
-Harald

By: kevinclosson

kevinclosson — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:54:39 +0000

Hi Harald,

Good topic. One little nit, though. That can’t be your script because ; (comma) is not a shell builtin…or do you have a script or a.out in your path called “;” :-)