System monitor: what does "Load average" exactly cover ???

[Tony Arnold]

Vince,

Vincent Trouilliez wrote:

> In the system monitor, at the top of the "Processes" tab, it says:
> 
> " Load averages for the last 1, 5, 15 minutes: 0.09, 0.16, 0.18 "
> 
> 
> So my question is: does anyone know for sure what these tiny "load"
> numbers represent exactly ? How are they calculated ?

Have a look at Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_(computing)

As I recall anything less than 1 means your system is lightly loaded, if
it goes significantly higher than 1 then your machine is doing more work
than it really should be!

Regards,
Tony.
-- 
Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
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