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From: msm@condo.cis.ufl.edu (Michael S. McLean)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: What does xload measure ??  (sunclock)
Message-ID: <24728@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
Date: 4 Oct 90 20:33:18 GMT
References: <372@stephsf.stephsf.com>
Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU
Reply-To: msm@ufl.edu (Michael S. McLean)
Organization: U of Florida. Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 22

In article <372@stephsf.stephsf.com>, wengland@stephsf.stephsf.com (Bill
England) writes:

|> When sunclock is running xload shows the load going from 1/2 to just 
|> over 2.  Thats a 'load' increase of over 400%.  The cpu usage from ps 
|> shows only 12/sec per hour though.  (stephsf has 9Mb of memory)
|>
|> What does xload measure anyway ???   
|>

Xload displays the sampled average of the length of the run queue
over the last minute.  Hence, unless sunclock is forking other
processes, it can only drive up the load average by one process.
Even to do that, it would have to run continuously without ever
sleeping or blocking for I/O, and would very probably get more
than 12 sec/hour of cpu time.


Michael S. McLean (msm@ufl.edu)    
Computer and Information Sciences  "We are all the Swedish Chef."
College of Engineering                   -- Harry Berryman
University of Florida