Re: [tlug] load averge question

[xian <ccd@example.com>]

On Wednesday 05 February 2003 19:17, Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote:
> A. Sajjad Zaidi wrote:
> > How odd is odd? If its something like 4am, then its daily cronjobs. At
> > other times, it could be other cronjobs.
>
> So true, I've been caught once by a cron job (locate's db update) run at
> 6am once before ... but these odd times are things like 11am, 1pm, 3pm,
> 7pm ...
>
> > Could be. Why don't you set the script so whenever the load goes above a
> > certain number, it prints a list of processes and the resources they are
> > taking up?
>
> Good idea. I just added to my script so that I get the number of apache
> process running along with the load average every 5 seconds.
>
> But would apache starting up 64 servers (what I have MinSpare set to)
> spike the load up from 0.2 to 7 in less than 2 minutes??
>
> When this server has about 600 apache processes running it's load
> average is only about 0.3 ... I can't for the life of me imagine what
> the machine is doing that would make the load go to 7.
>
> Jc
>

That 0.3 load avg? That's the box mocking you. When the avg spikes, it's 
thinking up ways to kill you. But it doesn't have hands. So it's really 
trying to figure out a way to grow hands. That takes up about 1.5 of the 
load. Another 2.5 of that is dedicated to scheming up a way to electrocute 
you, the rest is going to flights of fancy dealing with taking over your body 
and ruling over mankind in sick, binary despotism.
-X