From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 29 18:07:42 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E5B016A406 for ; Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:07:42 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mail-out4.apple.com (mail-out4.apple.com [17.254.13.23]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 558C413C44C for ; Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:07:42 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from relay5.apple.com (relay5.apple.com [17.128.113.35]) by mail-out4.apple.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l2TI7ela006094; Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:07:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from relay5.apple.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by relay5.apple.com (Symantec Mail Security) with ESMTP id 9B25129C006; Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:07:40 -0700 (PDT) X-AuditID: 11807123-ade2abb000005a91-9b-460c006cf6f4 Received: from [17.214.13.96] (cswiger1.apple.com [17.214.13.96]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by relay5.apple.com (Apple SCV relay) with ESMTP id 81E8430400C; Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:07:40 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <460BFEC1.2060901@designaproduct.biz> References: <460BFEC1.2060901@designaproduct.biz> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Chuck Swiger Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:07:39 -0700 To: Laszlo Nagy X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2) X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: interpreting uptime output X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:07:42 -0000 On Mar 29, 2007, at 11:00 AM, Laszlo Nagy wrote: [ ...about the "uptime" command... ] > This is great, except that it does not tell me what "0.5" means? > Example: > > 1:41PM up 5 days, 2:22, 4 users, load averages: 0.36, 0.42, 0.51 > > The only referenced material in the man page is w(1) which tells this: > > > The load average numbers give the number of jobs in the run queue > averaged over 1, 5 and 15 minutes. > > What are those "jobs"? I guess they are not processes. What is that > "run queue"? Which is better, the lower or the higher number? A job is a runnable process. The run queue is a list containing the processes which are runnable at a particular time. Lower numbers indicate lower CPU load. From "man getloadavg": > DESCRIPTION > The getloadavg() function returns the number of processes in > the system > run queue averaged over various periods of time. Up to nelem > samples are > retrieved and assigned to successive elements of loadavg[]. > The system > imposes a maximum of 3 samples, representing averages over the > last 1, 5, > and 15 minutes, respectively. -- -Chuck