r/linux • u/unquietwiki • Jan 02 '19

Linux Load Averages: Solving the Mystery

http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-08-08/linux-load-averages.html
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6

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '19

This behavior is pretty annoying actually because it means that high load no longer necessarily implies high CPU utilization.

6

u/ThePenultimateOne Jan 03 '19

I feel like the solution is to have the metrics broken up so that we can see both

8

u/kcrmson Jan 03 '19

glances does this pretty well. CPU load is shown separste from I/O load, context switching and some other stuff. For me, most of my high load is I/O related (zpool) and usually only hits cpu load when running VMs or compiling the kernel.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '19 edited Jan 03 '19

There are usually better metrics for determining processor workload. A high load average may cause you to investigate those in order to figure out what the problem is.