[wellylug] Load average statistics dubious

[Bruce Hoult]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 12:29 PM, C.T.F. Jansen
<frank.jansen at actrix.gen.nz> wrote:
> I used to use a number of different unix OS's and the load average
> statistics on them is an artificial number and often with values too
> different with what is actually happening on the system. It was regarded
> as a joke and people warned not to use it.

I don't understand. Load average has a very specific definition -- the
number of processes in runnable (including actually running) state. It
aims to tell you how busy the CPUs are and whether you could
potentially faster ones, or more of them.

I'm not aware of any system on which it fails to do this in a reasonable way.

However CPU load is far from the only measure of a system's
performance. Memory and I/O usage are also important, and are measured
by different statistics.

This is not news, so I'm not sure why all the breathlessness?