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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Interpreting system load

On Fri, Oct 07, 2005 at 12:40:17AM -0400, Brenda J. Butler wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 08:27:22PM -0400, Alex @ Avantel Systems wrote:
> > Is there some usefull way of interpreting the System Activity reports to 
> > determine if the load on my system is more than it should be.  For example 
> > that 1, 5, 15 minute average we get with "uptime" as well as the results of 
> > the command "sar" and then of course the full report obtained with 
> > "less /var/log/sa/sar05"  (all assuming it's redhat or fedora - don't know 
> > about other distros)
> 
> The 1, 5, and 15 minute averages are the average number of processes
> ready to run for the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.  If this is less than 1,
> you have cpu to spare.
> 
> I've heard that if you have a sparc machine, the number can be up to
> 10 and you're still ok...

Its "1" per processor.  So on an 8-way box a load average of 8.00 means
you're running the machine at full capacity.

mh

-- 
Martin Hicks || mort [ at ] bork [ dot ] org || PGP/GnuPG: 0x4C7F2BEE

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