Re: cp load average

[Artur Grabowski <art@blahonga.org>]

Condor <condor@vcable.net> writes:

> Hello,
> i see in my server with obsd i386 3.2
> that when i copy one file with 600 MB or more, my server load average is bring up:
> #cp some_file /mnt/hdd2
> --- paste ---
> # w
>  5:11PM  up 8 days, 20:39, 1 user, load averages: 28.35, 13.29, 6.79
> USER    TTY FROM              LOGIN@  IDLE WHAT
> root     p0 ixip.net          4:46PM     0 w 
> --- end ---
> any body have idea how i configure my system that my cp (mv) to give low CPU resources? Because in this variant some services stop work like sendmail or worked very slowly.

The load average is just a number that sometimes can show the load on the
systems, but in most cases it just generates mail to mailing lists when
people get too high (or low) values.

The load average is a number that is calculated once a second when an
the kernel examines its state and makes an educated guess about how
much work will have to be done in the nearest future. That guess is
normally pretty accurate, but in some situations it can be completly
off.  _The_load_average_says_nothing_about_the_cpu_usage_.

In your case it seems that other processes are in short-term sleep
waiting for some resource (probably the disk) and that makes the load
average jump up. My guess is that you have 70-80% cpu idle anyway.

//art