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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
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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.