help with output from top

[Richard Darling]

I'm receiving the following output from top. It seems odd that the load is 4.02% with user, nice and system at 0% and idle at 100%. The only process running other than top is vxfsd. All my users are gone, and the load is usually less than .10% with no one on the system. Could this be an indicator of an upcoming problem? I also noticed that the system seems loud (fans?), but I don't know if that is just me being oversensitive right now.

System: L1000 Tue Jan 30 17:30:29 2007
Load averages: 4.01, 4.05, 4.08
99 processes: 97 sleeping, 2 running
Cpu states:
LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS
4.01 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Memory: 19728K (2428K) real, 93072K (1812K) virtual, 68984K free Page# 1/8

TTY PID USERNAME PRI NI SIZE RES STATE TIME %WCPU %CPU COMMAND
? 28 root 152 20 0K 0K run 143:39 1.18 1.18 vxfsd
? 360 root 154 20 32K 40K sleep 297:11 0.08 0.08 syncer
? 1118 root 168 20 120K 272K sleep 19:32 0.07 0.07 p_client
? 3 root 128 20 0K 0K sleep 169:29 0.03 0.03 statdaemon
? 0 root 128 20 0K 0K sleep 97:07 0.02 0.02 swapper
? 1 root 168 20 400K 188K sleep 0:14 0.02 0.02 init
? 2 root 128 20 0K 0K sleep 224:12 0.02 0.02 vhand
? 4 root 128 20 0K 0K sleep 3:22 0.02 0.02 unhashdaemon
? 8 root 100 20 0K 0K sleep 1:56 0.02 0.02 supsched
? 18 root 147 20 0K 0K sleep 3:31 0.02 0.02 lvmkd
? 19 root 147 20 0K 0K sleep 3:11 0.02 0.02 lvmkd
? 20 root 147 20 0K 0K sleep 3:38 0.02 0.02 lvmkd
? 21 root 147 20 0K 0K sleep 3:11 0.02 0.02 lvmkd

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I wouldn't be very concerned. I never attach much weight to top's output as it is not much of a diagnostic tool but I suppose that it's worth what you paid for it. The first thing that I would do is look for and install the latest top cumulative patch. You didn't identify your OS version so you get to do the search on your own. If you are actually having problems like fans or power supplies, the Attention LED should be flashing. If it ain't then the symptoms are in your head.

[Bob E Campbell]

The load average is not a percentage. It is the number of processes in the run queue. A process in the queue could be included in the load average without having any associated CPU usage.

[Richard Darling]

Hi Clay,
Running 11.00 on an L1000. I had already checked lights and logs - all Ok. Maybe it is in my head. Ran sar with various switches - nothing seems odd.

I guess the question is what other factors effect load averages?

Thanks.
Richard

[A. Clay Stephenson]

swinstall PHCO_26020. There were fixes for the Load Average metric.