[tlug] CPU load average high but CPU 93% iddle?

["Jean-Christian Imbeault" <jean_christian@example.com>]

Can help me understand the following stats?

  8:32pm  up 83 days,  4:26,  1 user,  load average: 3.29, 1.76, 0.80
477 processes: 475 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 1 stopped
CPU states:  1.3% user,  5.5% system,  0.0% nice, 93.0% idle
Mem:   516820K av,  512412K used,    4408K free,       0K shrd,   26960K 
buff
Swap: 1052216K av,   19456K used, 1032760K free                  352164K 
cached


I watched top for about 1 minute and the CPU was almost always >90% iddle 
yet the load average report was above 2 or three most of the time.

How could this be? The CPU is mostly iddle yet the load average says I have 
processes that can't get run?

Jc

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