From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Mar 25 13:30:59 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mr200.netcologne.de (mr200.netcologne.de [194.8.194.109]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D517337B719 for ; Sun, 25 Mar 2001 13:30:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from pherman@frenchfries.net) Received: from husten.security.at12.de (dial-213-168-88-212.netcologne.de [213.168.88.212]) by mr200.netcologne.de (Mirapoint) with ESMTP id ACZ13965; Sun, 25 Mar 2001 23:30:53 +0200 (CEST) Received: from localhost (localhost.security.at12.de [127.0.0.1]) by husten.security.at12.de (8.11.3/8.11.2) with ESMTP id f2PLUfX73426; Sun, 25 Mar 2001 23:30:41 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from pherman@frenchfries.net) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 23:30:40 +0200 (CEST) From: Paul Herman To: Ryan Thompson Cc: j mckitrick , Subject: Re: interpreting 'load' statistics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Ryan Thompson wrote: > j mckitrick wrote to freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG: > > > > > When you run 'w' or 'uptime', how can you interpret the load > > statistics? I always thought under 1 was okay. I read that somewhere > > but now I'm not so sure. The others have already given good answers, but when I read... > Make a fork bomb. > Run the fork bomb AS A NORMAL USER. > As root, run uptime. > Kill the fork bomb. > > ryan@stimpy$ uptime > 1:01PM up 91 days, 10:17, 3 users, load averages: 572.68, 607.01, 388.05 ...I just wanted to point out that there is an interesting 'feature' that I found when testing the same thing. The load only goes up to 1024.00. After that, it rolls back over to 0.00. 09:22:12{{ttyp4}pherman@husten}~//> uptime 9:24AM up 21 mins, 1 user, load averages: 1000.21, 723.32, 429.71 09:24:11{{ttyp4}pherman@husten}~//> uptime 9:25AM up 23 mins, 1 user, load averages: 1023.58, 805.98, 492.73 09:25:50{{ttyp4}pherman@husten}~//> uptime 9:25AM up 23 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.74, 809.83, 495.92 09:25:53{{ttyp4}pherman@husten}~//> uptime 9:26AM up 23 mins, 1 user, load averages: 160.21, 817.34, 502.26 09:26:00{{ttyp4}pherman@husten}~//> ps ax | wc 1075 6450 41030 I found this out on a machine with only 64MB RAM which ain't an easy trick, but I could still get work done on the machine and kill the processes without any major problems, and I didn't have to reboot. Gotta love FreeBSD. -Paul. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message