9.3 Process Averages

Ian Smith smithi at nimnet.asn.au
Sun Oct 19 11:24:10 UTC 2014


In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 541, Issue 6, Message: 1
On Fri, 17 Oct 2014 08:25:30 -0400 Grant Peel <gpeel at thenetnow.com> wrote:
 [reformatted a tad or two]
 >      I have recently built FreeBSD 9.3 (i386) from the ground up (making our
 > next gen server build). 
 > 
 > Once complete I have been allowing it to run under no load, and have noticed
 > that the load averages Hovering around 0.40 - 0.50 (see below).
 > 
 >      I have TERM'd and killed just about everything and the usage remains. I
 > have never seen any other server do
 > This with any other build. Is there something new in 9.x that might be
 > causing this? I have servers running 8.0
 > With lots of software running that is not this high.
 > 
 >     I am not at all concerned about the hardware as it was an active server
 > with no issues, and the system compiled without any issues.

 > root at spare:/usr/local/etc/rc.d # top -Sa -s10
 > last pid:  3715;  load averages:  0.43,  0.44,  0.43  up 0+08:55:07  08:14:46
 > 
 > 33 processes:  2 running, 30 sleeping, 1 waiting
 > CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.0% system,  0.0% interrupt,  100% idle
 > Mem: 12M Active, 309M Inact, 104M Wired, 88M Buf, 560M Free
 > Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free
 > 
 >   PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
 >    11 root          2 155 ki31     0K    16K RUN     1  17.8H 200.00% [idle]
 >    12 root         17 -84    -     0K   136K WAIT    0   0:42   0.00% [intr]
 >     8 root          1  16    -     0K     8K syncer  1   0:21   0.00% [syncer]
 >    13 root          3  -8    -     0K    24K -       0   0:07   0.00% [geom]

Hi Grant,

etc, yes nothing happening for a 0.43 load average; similar to what I've 
noticed on 9.1-R through 9.3-PRE.  9.1 was on a P3-M 1133 single core; I 
didn't record load avgs but noticed they seemed high for an idle system 
(without X running), when my much busier 8.2 workstation (same model) 
near idling typically showing in the order of:

last pid: 69003;  load averages:  0.04,  0.09,  0.08   up 19+19:58:09
148 processes: 2 running, 130 sleeping, 16 waiting
CPU:  5.4% user,  0.0% nice,  4.5% system,  8.3% interrupt, 81.8% idle
Mem: 309M Active, 244M Inact, 151M Wired, 22M Cache, 85M Buf, 10M Free
Swap: 2048M Total, 142M Used, 1906M Free, 6% Inuse

  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
   11 root          1 171 ki31     0K     8K RUN     73.7H 100.00% idle
35770 smithi        1  50    0 35868K 10228K select 294:31  2.69% gkrellm
   12 root         16 -60    -     0K   128K WAIT   885:01  0.00% intr
 1341 smithi        1  44    0   194M   151M select 552:35  0.00% Xorg
 1433 smithi        3  44    0 18812K  4964K select 254:40  0.00% xmms
 1423 smithi        1  45    0 30424K  3864K select 249:16  0.00% kdeinit
54051 smithi        5  59    0   230M   201M ucond   92:26  0.00% seamonkey-bin
 1411 smithi        1  44    0 37620K 15896K select  55:44  0.00% kdeinit
   21 root          1  44    -     0K     8K syncer  29:31  0.00% syncer
 1429 smithi        1  44    0 32208K  4884K select  24:33  0.00% kdeinit
 1399 smithi        1  44    0 32632K  7128K select  17:15  0.00% kdeinit
 1418 smithi        1  44    0 29424K  9200K select  13:45  0.00% artsd
35841 smithi        1  44    0  3652K   880K nanslp   7:32  0.00% ephem
 1111 root          1  44    0  3456K   400K select   5:14  0.00% moused
 1009 root          1  44    0  3352K   360K select   2:40  0.00% powerd

Whereas my 9.3-PREREL X200 laptop (c2duo 2.4GHz 2GiB) usually shows 
above 0.5 and even up to 0.7 for extended periods doing, well, very 
little except idling X & KDE4 and such and running top over ssh.  viz:

last pid: 96312;  load averages:  0.64,  0.62,  0.59     up 103+18:41:15
87 processes:  2 running, 84 sleeping, 1 waiting
CPU:  0.6% user,  0.0% nice,  3.4% system,  0.0% interrupt, 96.0% idle
Mem: 469M Active, 785M Inact, 463M Wired, 9680K Cache, 207M Buf, 135M Free
Swap: 2048M Total, 153M Used, 1895M Free, 7% Inuse

  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
   11 root          2 155 ki31     0K    32K RUN     1 1042.5 200.00% idle
57804 smithi        1  26    0   163M 13156K select  0 128.0H   5.27% gkrellm
 1428 smithi        1  20    0   567M   372M select  1  18.1H   0.20% Xorg
 1513 smithi        3  20    0   504M 42084K kqread  0 713:04   0.00% kdeinit4
    9 root          1  16    -     0K    16K syncer  0 506:59   0.00% syncer
   12 root         22 -84    -     0K   352K WAIT    1 360:58   0.00% intr
10484 smithi        2  22    0   488M 41492K select  0 284:20   0.00% kdeinit4
 1515 smithi        2  52    0   468M 30628K select  0 196:17   0.00% kdeinit4
 1511 smithi        3  20    0   540M 45824K select  0  74:37   0.00% kdeinit4
 1475 smithi        3  20    0   481M 29584K select  0  62:31   0.00% kdeinit4
26060 root          2  20    0 52228K  2872K select  1  46:11   0.00% upowerd
 1259 haldaemon     2  20    0 57488K  3736K select  0  38:43   0.00% hald
   16 root          1 -16    -     0K    16K tzpoll  0  20:59   0.00% acpi_thermal
43659 smithi        4  43    0   790M   172M select  0  12:45   0.00% plasma-desktop
  894 messagebus    1  20    0 14348K  1496K select  0  12:05   0.00% dbus-daemon
 1488 smithi        4  20    0   530M 67128K kqread  0  11:32   0.00% kwin
  853 root          1  20    0 12092K   800K select  1   8:33   0.00% powerd
   15 root         32 -68    -     0K   512K -       0   8:26   0.00% usb
 3952 root          1  20    0 22264K  1088K select  1   8:12   0.00% ntpd

etc, maybe 4% of ea CPU busy, gkrellm and resultant Xorg work about it.

And an ancient 5.5-STABLE <cough> firewall, nat plus various servers:
last pid: 41572;  load averages:  0.06,  0.02,  0.00  up 968+01:32:14
118 processes: 3 running, 92 sleeping, 23 waiting
CPU states:  0.4% user,  0.0% nice,  1.0% system,  0.0% interrupt, 98.6% idle
Mem: 68M Active, 24M Inact, 46M Wired, 7564K Cache, 25M Buf, 2000K Free
Swap: 384M Total, 39M Used, 345M Free, 10% Inuse

  PID USERNAME   PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
   11 root       171   52     0K     8K RUN       ??? 97.27% 97.27% idle
   27 root       -28 -147     0K     8K RUN    115.1H  0.00%  0.00% swi5: clock sio
49485 root        96    0 18724K 17240K select  83.0H  0.00%  0.00% natd
 5704 mysql       96    0 44648K  1296K lthr    61.0H  0.00%  0.00% mysqld
 5747 root        96    0  1368K   296K select  54.2H  0.00%  0.00% moused
   29 root       -44 -163     0K     8K WAIT    32.4H  0.00%  0.00% swi1: net
   22 root       -80 -199     0K     8K WAIT   931:10  0.00%  0.00% irq11: cbb0 cbb1+++
   44 root        20    0     0K     8K syncer 823:30  0.00%  0.00% syncer
   41 root       171   52     0K     8K pgzero 585:33  0.00%  0.00% pagezero
81196 root        96    0  4448K   792K select 555:23  0.00%  0.00% mpd4
86908 root        96    0  3248K   784K select 172:12  0.00%  0.00% ntpd
 3118 bind        96    0  8860K  3980K select 159:17  0.00%  0.00% named
 2886 root        96    0 18308K  3520K select 103:28  0.00%  0.00% httpd
57748 root        96    0  3828K   960K select  70:53  0.00%  0.00% sendmail
 2721 root        76  -20  1392K   144K select  62:49  0.00%  0.00% apmd

What top shows does reflect sysctl vm.loadavg on each of the above, so I 
really don't understand what 'load average' is meant to mean any more?

cheers, Ian


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