Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2015 14:31:35 +0000 From: Tom Evans <tevans.uk@googlemail.com> To: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> Cc: FreeBSD Stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: stable/10: high load average when box is idle Message-ID: <CAFHbX1%2BQT5E=wgDQ5SsCLZgVWeGxody_dVucbmMgdBNtukZEsQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20151104025748.F10372@sola.nimnet.asn.au> References: <20151027050508.GA7612@icarus.home.lan> <20151104025748.F10372@sola.nimnet.asn.au>
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On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 5:47 PM, Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> wrote: > Like yourself, I think this is far from 'cosmetic' as is oft suggested, > especially in some fairly ill-informed forum posts but also various list > posts. I've been watching load averages since OS/2 through FreeBSD 2.2 > till present and some Linux systems, and have never before seen anything > like this, especially on virtually entirely idle systems. While the LAs > reported during (say) make -j4 buildworld appear more same, who knows? > > I'm not suggesting that I think there's any sort of performance hit from > this; so far I don't, but 'cosmetic' suggests that it doesn't matter .. > Have you read mav's explanation on the PR? It certainly seems a valid explanation of why it is probably a cosmetic issue - that is, we could wake up more to get a truly perfect load average, but why bother? ISTM, the problem reports are of the form "My server is idle and it is reporting a non-idle load average below 1", and not "My server is supposedly idle, but is doing actual work causing the load average to be higher than it should be". Is there any evidence that we have the latter and not the former? Cheers Tom
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