Help understanding load averages

[Sean Murphy]

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I am running FreeBSD 4.11 it is a PIII 800

My system is running MRTG and SNMP for monotoring network switches.  The
system is very sluggish and sometimes not responsive. MRTG has had
problems with writing the new logs.

I am having trouble understanding how load averages work.  On some sites
they say a load average of 3 is high and to put services on another
server others say if it is over 1 put move services to another server.
I have read the handbook

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/basics-processes.html

I guess I am not getting it can someone help me how are load averages
figured out and what do they mean?  What is a high load average?


Here is the load on my system

#w
load averages: 1.52, 1.11, 1.04


#systat
~                    /0   /1   /2   /3   /4   /5   /6   /7   /8   /9   /10
~     Load Average   ||||||||

~                    /0   /10  /20  /30  /40  /50  /60  /70  /80  /90  /100
~             <idle> XXXXXXXXXXX
root           perl XXXXXXXXX
root           perl XXXXXXX

# swapinfo
Device          1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Type
/dev/ad0s1b        525120      272   524848     0%    Interleaved

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