What does 'load average' mean?

[Bartman]

I've seen that term in several places (

top

being one), but didnt quite get what it means.

it's just an indication of how busy your system has been

those aren't absolute though... some systems under high load have a load average of approximately 2, but i've heard of systems under high load having a load average of 20 and more. so it's not at all uncommon that if u let 2 systems do the exact same cpu intensive task for a while, they may have very different load averages.

so just think of it as an indication, but nothing more.
if u wanna know how high it goes for your system, let it compile something for about an hour and then check those load averages.

[kenshi]

I once read exactly what a load average is. It's how many programs on average are waiting to use the processor or something like that.

[civ1492]

hmm iiirc its the time in 5 10 15 that that the cpu spends on programs its a calculated value and times how respondive the system is to the tasks

[Bartman]

Seems you nobody really knows

Anyway, the theory of the number of programs waiting for CPU seems reasonable.

[kenshi]

It seems I was right.

http://www.utexas.edu/cc/faqs/unix/Load-average.html