From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jul 5 10:56:57 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from fremont.bolingbroke.com (adsl-216-102-90-210.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [216.102.90.210]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6523837BC2D for ; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 10:56:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from hacker@bolingbroke.com) Received: from fremont.bolingbroke.com (fremont.bolingbroke.com [216.102.90.210]) by fremont.bolingbroke.com (Pro-8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA13613; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 10:56:17 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 10:56:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Ken Bolingbroke To: Nathan Vidican Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: understanding load averages (sendmail) In-Reply-To: <3963703D.7F0E0377@wmptl.com> 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 Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Nathan Vidican wrote: > What are the values in sendmail.cf indicative of when they say 'Level at > which messages are just queued', and 'Level at which messages are > refused'. The defaults are 8 and 12 respectfully, but what do these > numbers mean? 8 simultainious messages, 8% of the server's usage, 80% of > the server's usage? What would be an appropriate setting for a > mid-traffic'd (3000 users) host? The load average is the average number of runnable processes. You can see the current load average for the last one, five, and fifteen minutes with the 'uptime' command. If your machine's load average is regularly over 8 without otherwise stretching resources, then you'd want to raise the values set for those parameters. The idea is to put the brakes on sendmail if it's starting to strain the machine's resources. Ken Bolingbroke hacker@bolingbroke.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message