From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Oct 19 16:51:10 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id EEB2C33D for ; Sun, 19 Oct 2014 16:51:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: from sola.nimnet.asn.au (paqi.nimnet.asn.au [115.70.110.159]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id B46F4B76 for ; Sun, 19 Oct 2014 16:51:08 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sola.nimnet.asn.au (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id s9JGorIT056184; Mon, 20 Oct 2014 03:50:55 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from smithi@nimnet.asn.au) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 03:50:53 +1100 (EST) From: Ian Smith To: Michael Sierchio Subject: Re: 9.3 Process Averages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20141020032110.Q56328@sola.nimnet.asn.au> References: <20141019203658.M56328@sola.nimnet.asn.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Alex , Grant Peel , FreeBSD Questions X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 16:51:11 -0000 On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 08:44:44 -0700, Michael Sierchio wrote: > Is device polling enabled? Nope. > The load average is a global number of runnable-but-waiting processes, but > you should divide by the number of cores to get something more intuitively > meaningful Yeah it's supposed to be. I just applied the fix referred to in: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=173541 itself referred from this forum post: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/high-load-average-with-idle-state.38757/ Namely, setting '# sysctl kern.eventtimer.timer=LAPIC' (previously HPET) on my (still) 9.3-PRERELEASE system, the load averages shown immediately started to drop from the previously shown 0.6 or so, after a minute or two to 0.10, 0.30, 0.45, and now a few minutes later to: last pid: 97253; load averages: 0.14, 0.09, 0.12 up 104+00:06:03 03:31:07 87 processes: 3 running, 83 sleeping, 1 waiting CPU: 0.4% user, 0.0% nice, 3.4% system, 0.0% interrupt, 96.1% idle Mem: 468M Active, 787M Inact, 482M Wired, 9680K Cache, 202M Buf, 116M Free Swap: 2048M Total, 153M Used, 1895M Free, 7% Inuse ie, about what I'd expect from an essentially idle system. Thanks to Alex, whose message just arrived here; I'd read it on the list webpage before following the above. (Alex, that PR is there if you remove the 'kern/' ie just as above .. perhaps to do with the change to Bugzilla?) Whether using LAPIC instead of HPET has any consequences here remains to be seen. cheers, Ian