I'm trying to compile editors/openoffice-2.0-devel (after successfully getting java/jdk15 running on amd64), and my load shot way up just as I started the compile. top didn't show me much, so I attributed it to the disk I/O that was going on, and didn't think much of it. Until the build failed. Now top /still/ isn't showing me much. systat -vm is showing me at just under 100% User, with little to no disk activity. I'm a little fuzzy as to /how/ load is calculated, but why would my system think that it's doing all kinds of work when ps, top, and systat can't really tell me /what/ it's doing? The system is AMD64 running 5.4-STABLE (compiled two nights ago, I believe). More information available on request...
Thus spake Damian Gerow (dgerow@afflictions.org) [19/04/05 21:21]: : I'm a little fuzzy as to /how/ load is calculated, but why would my system : think that it's doing all kinds of work when ps, top, and systat can't : really tell me /what/ it's doing? It turned out to be a runaway xmms process. But I still find it strange that it didn't show anything obvious in top.
On Wednesday, April 20, 2005 2:20 AM, Damian Gerow <> unleashed the infinite monkeys and produced:> Until the build failed. Now top /still/ isn't showing me much. systat -vm > is showing me at just under 100% User, with little to no disk activity. > > I'm a little fuzzy as to /how/ load is calculated, but why would my system > think that it's doing all kinds of work when ps, top, and systat can't > really tell me /what/ it's doing?The "load" is the number of active processes (the number of processes in the run queue). That's all it measures - not CPU load, disk I/O or anything else - purely the number of processes in the run queue. Load and processor usage aren't linked. If the processes are I/O bound (for example) then while the system load may be high, the actual CPU usage may well be low. Google produced http://www.teamquest.com/resources/gunther/ldavg1.shtml, which isn't a bad description of the load average, though heavily based on Linux. -- Rob | Oh my God! They killed init! You bastards!