-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 07/12/2012 02:36 PM, Steven Stern wrote: > On 07/12/2012 06:00 AM, Suvayu Ali wrote: rottled down and are at > about 1%. >> >> So my question is since CPU usage is already so low, what could >> be driving up the system load? This is bugging me since I also >> see a general sluggishness compared to a much faster system early >> this year. >> >> Thanks for any ideas. >> > > Are you listening to music? Doing background uploads or > downloads? > That would normally also be reflected to some extent in CPU usage and process activity as shown in top (unless the problem was buffering them from a really slow network file system or something). I would think Andrew is correct - the load is most likely being driven up by processes that are waiting on I/O (D-state, aka uninterruptible sleep). On Linux the load average represents the 1m, 5m and 15m decaying average of the number of processes that are either runnable (waiting on a runqueue or actually executing on the CPU) /and/ the number of processes blocked on I/O. There's a fair bit of inaccurate information about the definition of the load average on Linux floating around - this comes from the fact that it's calculated slightly differently on the Sys V UNIXes and BSD vs. Linux. Traditionally only the runqueue length (tasks running or waiting to be scheduled) are counted as "active". On Linux the "number of active processes" includes both tasks on the runqueue and tasks blocked on I/O; this means it's hard to compare the numbers meaningfully between BSD/Solaris and Linux even when running on the same hardware. Even well-known Linux magazines have managed to print entire articles that got this completely wrong in the past.. Regards, Bryn. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk/+3FwACgkQ6YSQoMYUY96EwgCgquBBvyp8Y5gc6NPirj/STDmw fGcAoLwQzPw1gcVAUgVZuxdZas/08Wp4 =Mznf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
