[mythtv-users] unexpected load with mythbackend running

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Sun May 29 19:38:01 UTC 2005


Greg Cope wrote:

>On 5/29/05, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Charlie Brej wrote:
>>
>>>Greg Cope wrote:
>>>
>>>>Cpu(s):  0.2% us,  0.2% sy,  0.0% ni, 99.3% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,
>>>>0.3% si
>>>>
>>>This says there isn't any load. 99.3% idle.
>>>      
>>>
>>Yeah.  I was having problems with the idle process eating up all my CPU
>>time, too, until I installed BOINC/SETI at home.  Now the idle process
>>barely gets any time...  ;)
>>
>CPU might be idle but load as returned by top or uptime is:
>
>load average: 0.25, 0.23, 0.18
>  
>
UNIX Load Average Part 1: How It Works
http://www.teamquest.com/resources/gunther/ldavg1.shtml
----------
Tim O'Reilly and Crew
The book UNIX Power Tools [POL97], tell us on p.726 The CPU:

The load average tries to measure the number of active processes at any 
time. As a measure of CPU utilization, the load average is simplistic, 
poorly defined, but far from useless.

That's encouraging! Anyway, it does help to explain what is being 
measured: the number of active processes. On p.720 39.07 Checking System 
Load: uptime it continues ...

... High load averages usually mean that the system is being used 
heavily and the response time is correspondingly slow.

What's high? ... Ideally, you'd like a load average under, say, 3, ... 
Ultimately, 'high' means high enough so that you don't need uptime to 
tell you that the system is overloaded.
----------

The article is well worth the read.  Those load averages, though, are 
nice and low.  Nothing to worry about.

Mike



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list