From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Sep 21 18:37:48 1995 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id SAA08303 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 18:37:48 -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 SAA08298 for ; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 18:37:42 -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 VAA01281; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 21:37:38 -0400 Received: (from nc@localhost) by aries.ai.net (8.6.11/8.6.12) id VAA24616; Thu, 21 Sep 1995 21:37:34 -0400 Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995 21:37:34 -0400 (EDT) From: Network Coordinator To: Terry Lambert cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Load averages. In-Reply-To: <199509220113.SAA27285@phaeton.artisoft.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 21 Sep 1995, Terry Lambert wrote: > > How are load averages calculated? > > When you find out, please put it in the man pages for vmstat & w & uptime. Okay, perhaps I mis-stated the question. Yes, I know that load averages are the average number of uncompleted jobs at any time [1, 5, 15 minutes if I remember correctly]. My question is why when a system is idle 95% of any second is it having any load average whatsoever? As always, thanks for your time and insightful answers. -Jerry.