Load Averages

[Jorb]

I ran "cat /proc/loadavg" on my hosting account as suggested on another forum. The results I got back ( 3.25 4.46 5.43 ... ) seem high. Anybody got any numbers I could compare these to? Is this a high load average?

My host is using Sphera's virtual dedicated server technology.

[Span]

It seems high (I'm getting 0.44, 0.56, 0.48), but you have to monitor it for a longer time since it is just a snapshot.

[hostpronto.com ]

[Jorb]

Thanks for the info. I've been watching it for a while and it is always over 3. hmmm....

[mcavic]

Try running top, and look at the %CPU in the list of processes. That'll tell you if something specific is using lots of CPU time.

Some machines will run at high load averages, without any performance problems. But generally, a Web server should be under 1 unless it's doing something special like a backup.

[Jorb]

unfortunately, 'top', 'uptime' and other commands are unavailable. I'm beginning to suspect that my host doesn't want people to know what's going on with the servers themselves

[Lord Majestic]

Try running top, and look at the %CPU in the list of processes. That'll tell you if something specific is using lots of CPU time.

CPU is not everything - if IO is the limit (hard drives, network) then site will still appear to be slow, while CPU usage will be low as it will be waiting for data to come back. Unix commands given above should show IO load as well as CPU tho.

[tienchihwang]

Hi,
Which linux command can I use to monitor the system Loading for a certain period of time?

Tien-Chih Wang