Server Load
From JumbaWiki
The three load average numbers give the average number of jobs in the run queue over the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes. In other words, the n-minute load average is the number of processes competing for the attention of the CPU(s) at any moment, averaged over n minutes.
The lowest possible load average is zero, the highest unlimited, though we rarely see load averages exceeding 20, and even 10 is unusual. A load average of one or two is about typical
So a load of 0.02 means that there are an average of 0.02 processes in the run queue. This could mean the CPU is idle 98% of the time, with 1 process running the remaining 2%, or idle 99.8% of the time, with 10 processes running the remaining 0.2% time.
For systems with multiple CPUs, the number needs to be divided by the number of processors in order to get a percentage.
Trivia
- On August 19 2006, Thewebdruid managed to get the server load up to 190.67 due to his extreme clumsyness.
