

When the Unix load average was added to Unix - sciurus
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/LoadAverageOrigin

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dws
If memory serves, the load average calculation was the only use of floating
point in the BSD 4.2 kernel. Reworking the algorithm to get 4.2 running on the
National 32016 before the floating point co-processor was available was my
first time inside the kernel. Fun times.

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schoen
I'm one week older than the Unix load average!

Or perhaps: my reported uptime is guaranteed to be longer than any Unix
system's. :-)

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wobbleblob
Really, you have never been rebooted?

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piyushpr134
no. he just sleeps :)

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sciurus
Also of interest is "Understanding the (original) meaning of Unix load
average"

[https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/LoadAverageMea...](https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/LoadAverageMeaning)

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rusbus
Given how hard it is to determine what is actually causing high load sometimes
I'm surprised we haven't evolved more easily actionable metrics.

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mjevans
You mean like per process time spent active on a CPU?

You could poll that ever so often and log the results to a database if you
actually cared; but the act of measuring changes the results...

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rusbus
I mean finding the actual cause of a high load number. There's no way to break
it down by process, or even find out if it's because of IO or network, etc.
without using other tools.

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Bonogongo
Fellow poor soul, over the last 10 years whenever a server has high load I've
got angry about the fact that load avg is not actionable, and exactly that "or
even find out if it's because of IO or network"

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feld
And don't forget that load average means something different between each OS

