How can this 'top' command output make sense? Load over 7 and total CPU use ~5%

[Chris Rees]

2009/5/24 Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>:
>>    From the glossary (p. 630) of _The_Design_and_Implementation_of_the
>> _FreeBSD_Operating_System_ by McKusick and Neville-Neil:
>>
>>        load average  A measure of CPU load on the system.  The load
>> average
>>                in FreeBSD is an average of the number of processes ready
>> to
>>                run or waiting for short-term events such as disk I/O to
>>                complete, as sampled once per second over the previous one-
>>                minute interval of system operation.
>>
> so this glossary should be fixed because it's nonsense.
>
> first - says that it's measure of CPU load
> then - "or waiting for short-term events such as disk I/O" - which is NOT
> measure of CPU load.
>

Er, what? Of course it is!

Chris

-- 
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