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[Mike Burk]

what does the "load" number represent when I run top. It does not have a % sign next to it. All the other number have % signs.

thanks,

Mike

[Pete Randall]

Load averages in the last one, five, and fifteen
minutes of all the active processors in the system.


From man top

Pete

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike

Top does not have a true identity like:-

4 cars or 4%.

It is based on the number of processes running against the number of CPUs.


A guide line for busy is based on the number of CPUs and is one per CPU.

So on a server with four CPUs a load of four and over indicates that it is busy.

This is only a guide and depends upon the apps running on the server.

Better tools are sar and glance to see what is going on.

HTH

Paula

[Jeff Schussele]

HI Mike,

They're just numbers to set a scale where 0 equals nothing really happening. Systems can be "quite" busy at *loads* of 3-6, Or not very busy at loads > 10.
They don't really translate to anything rock-solid. The key is to see the avgs over time...that's why it gives current as well as 5 & 15 minutes ago.

Rgds,
Jeff

[S.K. Chan]

It represents the average number of jobs in the run queue over the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes. This can be also seen from the "uptime" output.
# uptime

[Tim D Fulford]

Mike

Load is "The number of running or runable processe averaged over the last xxx " where xxx is 1 , 5 and 15 minutes (as listed on the top) and 1 minute when writtn by processor.

A load average of 1 is obviuosly the dividing line between "I can do it" to "it could be too much". Traditionally 3 has been the number that is quoted as the start of too much... however it must be borne in context. e.g. how busy is the CPU, is there a high disk IO etc. By way of a quick example
o 1 CPU box which is running at 99% CPU and a load average of 3 is probably bottle necked on CPU,
o 1 CPU machine with load of 22 with CPU of 5% is probably got loads of runable processes but they are being held up else where (say IO)

Tim