Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!sequent!rbk
From: rbk@sequent.UUCP (Bob Beck)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Record High Load Average
Message-ID: <16202@sequent.UUCP>
Date: 17 May 89 20:22:00 GMT
References: <1704@ucsd.EDU> <70329@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Reply-To: rbk@crg2.UUCP (Bob Bruce Beck)
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc
Lines: 12

A simple way to generate *very high* load average without comsuming cycles is
to create a program that makes a "vfork-chain".  Ie, process does vfork,
child does vfork, etc, etc, until some number of processes exist, and last
one does (eg) sleep(3600).  When parent process waits for vfork child to exec
or exit, it sleeps at "high" priority and *is* counted as part of the load
average.  Thus you can add '1' to the load average per process in this
chain.  This is only true on BSD systems with vfork.  Kinda neat to drive
load average way up and not actually impact things much.

-- 
Bob Beck			uunet!sequent!rbk
Sequent Computer Systems	(503)626-5700