From owner-freebsd-stable Mon Dec 1 11:36:47 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id LAA06734 for stable-outgoing; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 11:36:47 -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 LAA06724 for ; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 11:36:44 -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 LAA08439; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 11:35:30 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199712011935.LAA08439@implode.root.com> To: Tom cc: Mattias Pantzare , Justen Stepka , FreeBSD-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: CPU Load In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 01 Dec 1997 09:34:24 PST." From: David Greenman Reply-To: dg@root.com Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 11:35:30 -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >> 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. > > Short term disk wait? Is there a long term disk wait too? What is the >difference? You read that wrong. All disk waits are short term. Contrast that with tty waits which are considered long term. > There seem to be some differences in how different Unix systems >calculate the load average. Linux seems to do something quite different >for one. I don't know about Linux, but traditional Unix has always calculated the load average as a function of CPU+disk. -DG David Greenman Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project