Information from TOP command

[Christian Aguilar Varga]

Hello friends,

Could anyone explain to me about the CPU load meaning among LOAD and %CPU?

System: cg02-st1 Wed Aug 18 14:45:00 2010
Load averages: 0.71, 0.70, 0.70
135 processes: 106 sleeping, 28 running, 1 zombie
Cpu states:
CPU LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS
0 0.66 38.9% 0.2% 9.2% 51.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
1 0.76 72.9% 0.0% 2.8% 24.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
--- ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
avg 0.71 55.9% 0.2% 6.0% 37.9% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Memory: 922192K (762200K) real, 2222624K (2003860K) virtual, 3773544K free Page# 1/8

CPU TTY PID USERNAME PRI NI SIZE RES STATE TIME %WCPU %CPU COMMAND
0 ? 1345 root 152 20 313M 169M run 81236:56 93.14 92.98 cimserver
0 ? 17111 cg 152 20 89868K 12876K run 661:44 9.12 9.10 cgcollector
0 ? 17121 cg 152 20 73020K 6148K run 615:22 8.98 8.97 cgdistributor
1 ? 17110 cg 152 20 82476K 7736K run 450:37 6.37 6.36 cgcore
1 ? 17120 cg 152 20 73276K 6420K run 231:32 2.99 2.99 cgdistributor
0 ? 52 root 152 20 3312K 2944K run 193:05 0.52 0.52 vxfsd
0 ? 17075 cg 152 20 314M 98376K run 11:35 0.38 0.38 java
0 ? 17117 cg 152 20 73272K 6404K run 13:00 0.20 0.20 cgdistributor

The LOAD average is 55.9% and the process cimserver is using 92.98% .... What is the meaning of each value?

Regards,

CHristian aguilar

[Patrick Wallek]

>>The LOAD average is 55.9%

No, the USER AVG is 55.9%. That is 55.9% of the CPUs are being used for USER process.

The LOAD, either from the LOAD column or the "Load averages:" line is the average number of processes in the run queue in the interval.

For the "Load averages:" line, the first number is a 1 minute average, the 2nd number a 5 minute average and the 3rd number a 15 minute average.

A perusal of the 'top' man page will give an overview and what the command shows.