From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Sep 21 17:53:05 1995 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id RAA06936 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 17:53:05 -0700 Received: from virgo.ai.net (root@virgo.ai.net [198.69.44.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id RAA06931 for ; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 17:53:01 -0700 Received: from aries.ai.net (aries.ai.net [198.69.44.1]) by virgo.ai.net (8.6.11/8.6.12) with ESMTP id XAA00234 for ; Wed, 20 Sep 1995 23:34:42 -0400 Received: (from nc@localhost) by aries.ai.net (8.6.11/8.6.12) id XAA10485; Wed, 20 Sep 1995 23:34:38 -0400 Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 23:34:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Network Coordinator To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Load averages. Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk I know this is a fairly simple question, but for the life of me I don't remember. How are load averages calculated? We have a machine that [according to vmstat] is idle on average 96% of the time. Yet its load averages [during the same period] can be .20, .47 or even .01. There is very little, if any, swapping going on, and there is some very fast hard drive storage. Any ideas? Obviously, this isn't a crucial consideration unless we hit 10.0 or something, but its intellectual. Thanks, -Jerry.