Re. http://mail-index.NetBSD.org/netbsd-help/2004/01/11/0003.html

I don't think that loadaverages have any objective interpretation.
A .36 does not mean that you are using 36 percent of anything, it just
means that if recent past is a good indication of the future, then
in the next 100 seconds, you might expect 36 processes to get the CPU.
(They might not hold it for very long; perhaps they will wake up on
a socket they were waiting on, collect 1 byte of data, and go back
to sleep for more data.)

There would probably be a hue and cry if loadaverages were removed
from the system, though you need to know how the whole system behaves
w.r.t. loadaverages before you make any interpretation of what is a
"high" load.



That, at least, has been my understanding.  I wouldn't fret about
those numbers without more context.  (^&

-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/