Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!bilbo.jbrown@ucla-locus.ARPA From: bilbo.jbrown@ucla-locus.ARPA (Jordan Brown) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: misleading load average Message-ID: <2450@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 21:24:25 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2450 Posted: Fri Oct 25 21:24:25 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 19:31:07 EDT Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 6 The load average is calculated by examining the run queue every second, or something like that. This is done _after_ alarms go off, but _before_ the programs get to run, so a program which sleeps for a second, does a little, sleeps for a second, etc, will up the load average without affecting actual system load significantly. "tail -f" is one example of this; there are other programs which look for logins and logouts which do similar things.