From owner-freebsd-stable Mon Dec 1 00:28:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id AAA19645 for stable-outgoing; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 00:28:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable) Received: from implode.root.com (implode.root.com [198.145.90.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id AAA19639 for ; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 00:28:35 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from root@implode.root.com) Received: from implode.root.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by implode.root.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA02884; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 00:29:37 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199712010829.AAA02884@implode.root.com> To: Tom cc: Mattias Pantzare , Justen Stepka , FreeBSD-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: CPU Load In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 30 Nov 1997 23:14:34 PST." From: David Greenman Reply-To: dg@root.com Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 00:29:37 -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Mattias Pantzare wrote: > >> On Sat, 29 Nov 1997, Justen Stepka wrote: >> >> > Recently I added memory to my NFS server (dx4-100 now w/ 32 megs of RAM), >> > when I did this the overall system preformance increased dramiticly. The >> > problem that I noticed was that when using NFS/NIS the CPU load climbs to >> > about 4.0+, is there a special reason that this might be happening? >> >> The load value is not CPU load. It is the average number of processes >> ready to run or waiting for disk I/O to complete. > > No, it is the average number of processes that are ready-to-run. >Processes waiting for disk io (or any io) are not ready to run. Mattias Pantzare is correct. The load average is the number of runnable processes plus the number of processes in a short-term (disk) wait. It's meant to indicate the overall effect on interactive users, not necessarily just the use of the CPU. -DG David Greenman Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project