Berndt Josef Wulf <wulf@ping.net.au> writes:
> usually I'm not very concerned about the load averages on my system, but
> this seems to be rather strange....
> 
> After upgrading my workstation from NetBSD-1.3.3 to NetBSD-1.4-i386 I noticed 
> "uptime" reporting load averages > 2  for all three time intervalls whilst
> vmstat and top show idle times > 97%. The system is still very
> responsive and I wouldn't have noticed this if it wasn't for porting
> a program to NetBSD which makes use of the getloadavg() function.
> This all happens whilst the system is sitting idle with no major
> activity taking place.

I don't know why this would change between 1.3.3 and 1.4, but do you
have any processes in 'D' wait?  Those are counted as 'runnable' for
the purpose of calculating the load average.

However, your statement of "idle with no major activity" makes me
think you're not expecting to see any...


cgd
-- 
Chris Demetriou - cgd@netbsd.org - http://www.netbsd.org/People/Pages/cgd.html
Disclaimer: Not speaking for NetBSD, just expressing my own opinion.