load average + with no visible load ?

[Chuck Swiger]

On Jan 22, 2009, at 6:01 AM, Laszlo Nagy wrote:
> #uptime
> 9:06AM  up  6:14, 12 users, load averages: 25.39, 13.19, 9.55
>
> I would think that CPU is under 100% when load=15.58 . But it is not:


See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_average

A high load average should have your CPUs running near 100%; if they  
are not, on some platforms that tends to indicate that many processes  
are (or would be) runnable but are being blocked in a short-term wait  
condition due to network or disk I/O, or are being affected by VM  
paging activity.  This line of your top output indicates many  
processes are in a WAIT condition:

> 514 processes: 3 running, 490 sleeping, 1 zombie, 20 waiting


Regards,
-- 
-Chuck