I would be most interested in any links or resources that detailed how to interpet server performance based on users, cpu states etc etc that i can see via the "top" command when I log on via telnet.
There must be benchmarks or recommended guidelines that give me a basis of comparison.
I'm most concerned when I see the idle% reduced to zero ( 0 ) for the cpu state as users and system programs consume all available cpu resources.
Is this normal if it occurs sporadically or a strong indication of the resources of the server being overloaded?
Sign me... Thankful for any advice.
-Tim
trc@timbuc2.com

What are the load averages, there are 3 of them. That is a good indicator of how overloaded the system is.

Here's a snapshot at 4:45 mdt....

5:21pm up 11 days, 6:24, 1 user, load average: 0.88, 1.14, 1.34
219 processes: 213 sleeping, 6 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 87.7% user, 12.2% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle
Mem: 523872K av, 389436K used, 134436K free, 0K shrd, 87864K buff
Swap: 136512K av, 4280K used, 132232K free 134188K cached

Its not horrible in my opinion, but it is something that needs to be delt with. Add a CPU, or cut down on users prosseses.

Here ya go.

See attachment.

I guess .tif images are not allowed here.

bummer :(

Get it here:

http://www.racin.net/top1.tif