What does the load average of the top command mean?

The system average load is defined as the average process tree running in the queue within a specific time interval.

A process is located in the run queue if the following conditions are true:

-It is not waiting for the I/O operation results

-It does not actively enter the waiting state (that is, no ' wait ' is invoked)

-Not stopped (for example: waiting to terminate)

For example: [ROOT@WWW2 init.d]# uptime 7:51pm up to 2 days, 5:43, 2 users, load average:8.13, 5.90, 4.94 the final contents of the command output are expressed in the last 1, 5, 15 minutes. The average number of processes in the run queue.

In general, the performance of the system is good as long as the current number of active processes per CPU is not greater than 3.

If the number of tasks per CPU is greater than 5, it indicates that the machine has a serious performance problem.

For the above example, assuming the system has two CPUs, the current number of tasks for each CPU is:

8.13/2=4.065. This means that the performance of the system is acceptable.

In Linux, uptime, W, top commands have the output of the system average load average

Pending verification

The highest value is really a meaningless problem, this thing is in my experience, many times with I/O operations have a great correlation, if there is a large number of or abnormal I/O operations, this value will be very high.
Some of my servers at some peak times this value will be up to 100 +, but it's good to have a few days of the year.

Knowledge Point supplement: http://www.iteye.com/topic/645553 http://www.iteye.com/topic/613278