[mythtv-users] CPU Load vs. CPU Utilization (uptime and top)

[Greg Grotsky]

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Blammo <blammo.doh at gmail.com> wrote:

> Check VMstat, dstat, but I suspect either disk or network IO.
> Something kernel level not assigned to an individual process.
>
>
Thanks Blammo, I might have figured this out. I've been reading a little...

I found this page:
http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averagesthat
explains load average and that lead me to this page:
http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2011/02/10/understanding-disk-i-o-when-should-you-be-worriedthat
explains disk i/o. It took me a little while but I finally realized
that they are actually advertisements, albeit very well written. Anyway,
you're right, it seems that most of my problem is likely my slow 5400rpm
disk or my network connection. I'm probably getting a very slow write
performance and this causes the CPU to spend most of it's time waiting for
the data (2.3%wa in my original post). The CPU wait % is defined as load
even though the CPU utilization is idle.

Is my thinking correct?
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