As seen in my previous post, the load average can become very high. But what does mean those numbers?
This question was also posted a few days ago on misc@openbsd.org and here are two replies:
> I’m looking for some hints on evaluating load average.
You can’t. It’s a statement about “job queue lengths”, not about “how
busy” a machine is. And since different operating systems (and even
different versions) have made various tweaks to it over the years, it
is essentially a set of values you cannot evaluate the meaning of
according to a fixed sense of rules.
I prefer this one 😉
Translation:
It’s like measuring traffic flow by the length of a traffic jam.