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

["Koji Hayakawa" <sylf@example.com>]

As it was discussed recently, load average, IIRC, indicatges how many
processes are waiting behind queue on average.  And if you have some other
bottle neck (such as I/O), then the load average could be high while CPU is
idling.  I just encountered this recently while trying to read bad CDR.

So for example, if you run something CPU intensive by itself (like
SETI@example.com, I believe), then load average could be on the low side while CPU
usage is at 100%.  OTOH, if you try to untar/zip 20 files at a time(!!),
then disk I/O can't keep up with the potential of the CPU, and will get
result as you posted.

...at least that's how I'm lead to believe so far...

Koji

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jean-Christian Imbeault [mailto:jean_christian@example.com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 6:52 AM
> To: tlug@example.com
> Subject: [tlug] CPU load average high but CPU 93% iddle?
>
>
> 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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