[TAG] Tracking load average issues

[Jim Jackson]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, Neil Youngman wrote:

> I was asked to look at a system that had a consistent load average around 5.3
> to 5.5. Now I know very little about how to track down load average issues,
> so I haven't been able to find much. The CPU usage is about 90% idle, so it's
> not CPU bound.

Have you run the "top" command? It shows which processes are most active.
I believe there are such things as gtop, ktop? etc for the those suffering
command line timidity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htemerity (timidity is a midi
application :-).

A load ave of 5 means that there were on ave 5 processes read to run for
the whole of the averaging period - the usual ave periods are 1min 5min
and 15min.

> I googled for "load average", "high load average" and "diagnose load average"
> and I found very little of use. the one thing I found was that if it's
> processes stuck waiting on I/O "ps ax" should show processes in state "D".
> There are none visible on this box.
>
> Do the gang know of any good resources for diagnosing load average issues or
> have any useful tips?
>
> Neil Youngman
>
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