Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : server load avarage

How do i define in good or bad on a servers load average?
e.g 2.76, 2.52, 1.93

what would be a critical load average?

thanks
Steve

[Mike]

The closer to 0.00 the better, of course.

2.76, 2.52, 1.93 is farily high. Most likely it is a CPU spike caused from a user's CGI script. You may want to investigate what is using up your resources.

Try running "top" to monitor your machine. Any resource hogs would be listed at the top. You can also use "ps -aux" to view all processes.

what are those values meant to represent really, my server was getting 29,28,28 load average for hours at a time the last 2 days... i had to upgrade the server and tweak the settings in mysql...

[Steve b]

Hi Mike

thanks for the tip! that is really usefull!

Do you know where i can find a way to look at the last ftp logins?

Thanks
steve

[Steve b]

Something tells me that i have too many processes....what would cause these processes?

5:08pm up 2 days, 2:51, 1 user, load average: 0.13, 0.03, 0.01
66 processes: 65 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 0.1% user, 0.3% system, 0.0% nice, 99.5% idle
Mem: 63400K av, 56344K used, 7056K free, 143952K shrd, 6112K buff
Swap: 128484K av, 10012K used, 118472K free 23040K cached

I have a set of php scripts pulling from a database and i am wondering whether i have left out a closing tag to the database...could this be possible?

thanks
Steve

Can someone explain the load averages. How are they measured? What is the range? Why is there 3 of them (sepearated by comma), what does each one mean? People have been taking about them for ages yet I still don't understand them.

[Dexter]

Originally posted by Admin:
Can someone explain the load averages. How are they measured? What is the range? Why is there 3 of them (sepearated by comma), what does each one mean? People have been taking about them for ages yet I still don't understand them.

Well as is my understanding...load average is how many processes are waiting in que to execute and the numbers are for last 5, last 10, and last 15 minutes

but don't quote me on that!

Dex

[Mike]

Dexter,

You're very close..

It's not the processes in que that are waiting to run, it's an average of the processes that have already run.

Load average is a set of 3 numbers which measures the average load on the system in the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes. The load average gives an idea of the amount of load or pressure being applied to the CPU at any given time. Information is sent through a CPU in cycles (usually only on the upstroke of a cycle). So half of the cycle is often nothing more than wasted energy. Some programs can and do utilize this downward portion of the cycle and as a result make it appear as though the CPU is being worked very hard but in fact it is not being worked any harder than when the information was passing though on only the upstroke of the cycle.

[Mike]

Forgot to mention how to look at FTP logins:

You can view active FTP sessions by executing "ftpwho" - And you can view old FTP/Telnet logins by executing "last".

[Michael]

To add to what Mike said above, you can see as many logins as you want to by putting
'-numerical number' on the end.

Example: 'last -10' will show the last 10 logins
'last -102' will show the last 102 logins

Typing last just 'last' will most likely spit out too much to handle.

You can also type 'last | more' then push enter to scroll down the list at your own pace.

Regards
Mike

[Jag]

Nah, those are really high load ave.
I have 104 processes runinng and not even half that load. You have something hanging there. I do have 512mb ram though

[MikeA]

Originally posted by Steve b:
[B]Something tells me that i have too many processes....what would cause these processes?

5:08pm up 2 days, 2:51, 1 user, load average: 0.13, 0.03, 0.01
66 processes: 65 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 0.1% user, 0.3% system, 0.0% nice, 99.5% idle
Mem: 63400K av, 56344K used, 7056K free, 143952K shrd, 6112K buff
Swap: 128484K av, 10012K used, 118472K free 23040K cached

Steve, your problem is not enough memory. You should be running at least 256 MB or preferably 512 MB. I think that you would see a big improvement in speed. Also, what kind of processor do you have? You have less than 8 MB of free memory. I think that in your case memory is probably your bottleneck.

------------------
Mike Astin
WebAuthorities
http://www.webauthorities.com
http://www.resellerinfo.com - A free reseller information site (coming soon!)

[This message has been edited by MikeA (edited 08-11-2000).]

[Jag]

I disagree but not completely. Yes you may need more ram. But do not pay attention the amount free ever on linux. The reason is linux is very aggressive with ram and when you put in more ram (512mb) then it will consume 95%+ of that too. It always uses the ram too ots benefit even if there were only one site on the ,machne that got 100 hits a day it would be this way. The only time to start worrying is when its starts using up the swap file!

Jaguar,

Thanks for posting that info on linux using ram. I was a bit concerned with my new server (3 days old). It has almost no activity on it, load averages were around 0.02, but yet I was using up 120 of the 128 megs of ram. I was starting to get concerned that I would need an endless suply of ram once the server became busy. Now I know that is normal.

[Jag]

no problem. it is normal.