I liked your grocery store analogy. When I worked in customer support (defect support for a large commercial software product), we had spikes in activity (incoming customer calls) occasionally, but we were able to eventually catch up while the incoming volume was lower/more normal. Over time, the number of incoming calls increased (in part due to the, uh... evolving quality of the product and new releases, as well as increasing numbers of customers), and the "spikes" started to become the new "normal" volume. Unfortunately, management was very slow at hiring new people, so we got more and more overwhelmed, as our load average grew ever higher. Eventually people started leaving (CPU cores burning out? 😁 ), which made the load even higher on the remaining people. I've since moved on to other things, and I'm enjoying my work a lot more than I did when I was in that job. I do credit it for helping me to get into my later positions, though. Anyway, just wanted to say I did like your analogy, I thought it illustrates the concept well. I've been using Linux for 24 years now, and I knew a higher load average is "bad", or at least hints at a potentially overloaded system, but I always got confused about how to actually interpret it. I guess the idea that "1 means 100%" comes from the days of single-core systems. This video definitely helped me to understand what's really going on.
@abubua87812 жыл бұрын
The number of processors can also be found by the command " nproc " which can be installed be various packages, eg coreutils
@Xcr-oj5ih2 жыл бұрын
I see @abu bua mentioned "nproc" as an alternate for processor info. "lscpu" can be used as well. It is usualy installed on most Linux distros, but can be installed as part of the "util-linux" package if not on your system. Thank you Jay... Awesome information. I have learned 80% of my Linux commands from watching your videos and reading comments.
@BehzodSabirov2 жыл бұрын
From my experience, the load average also starts to grow when RAM runs out and processes start to eat into the swap file, which affects disk IO
@bobwong82682 жыл бұрын
👍👍👍👍👍 Thank you very much Jay, learnt something New & Useful today😊
@alvarezd4 ай бұрын
This video helped me understand linux load average concept very well. Thanks!
@Kanthon2 жыл бұрын
I ordered a hard copy of your book last night. Keep up the good work, sir.
@Im.Tabachnik2 жыл бұрын
This is the Best Video on this Topic! Thank you again for awesome videos!
@TheCuteworm2 жыл бұрын
平衡 ... mmm... you really nailed it.
@jorgeorozco935 Жыл бұрын
Awesome video, i liked the simple way you explained the topic
@PowerUsr12 жыл бұрын
You’re right. The supermarket analogy worked
@brandongraham35092 жыл бұрын
Love the supermarket analogy
@shahidhiraj2613 Жыл бұрын
Thank you very much for detailed explanation, just to add on we can use nproc command to find number of processors
@shabadabadoo43262 жыл бұрын
The percentage analogy is ALWAYS a bad one, when looking at load average. It is the average number of processes queued to be handled by cpu package, over a given length of time(1, 5 and 15 minutes as you mentioned). This is distinctly different from determining capacity, because it is NOT how many processes actually handled over that time. Only how many are queued for cpu, over that time. A load avg of 4 on a quad core cpu, doesn't mean the cpu is at 100% capacity. The way processes are managed in the kernel, means linux can adequately manage a number of processes well over the number of cpu cores. To know if the load is high, takes a much more holistic approach to troubleshooting, involving consideration of CPU states.
@MarkusHobelsberger2 жыл бұрын
I think load average is not only measured by CPU workload. It can also increase when there is a disk I/O bottleneck. I usually encounter very high load averages during specific backup jobs of folders with many small files from mechanical drives while the actual CPU utilization is below 30%.
@christopherjackson21572 жыл бұрын
Thats how I understand it. The more processes waiting to be completed the higher the load. Any sort of bottleneck should increase load avg
@aniscuet0162 жыл бұрын
Thanks for the video, it's awesome! A question! how did you make your BASH CLI so nice? what did you use? Thanks!
@abhimudaliar10643 ай бұрын
Thank you.
@ahmedghallab53424 ай бұрын
شكرا Thanks it was very helpful
@christopherjackson21572 жыл бұрын
I've been doing some performance testing over the past week and you can get load averages that exceed the number of cpus. So loads above 100 percent by this measurement. I believe load avg is determined by the number of processes waiting to be completed so it shouldn't exceed number of cpus when working normally. But when ur slamming the system and there's serious bottlenecking that's not necessarily the case. The highest I saw was loads of around 3 on 2 cores (when I started seeing loads above 100 percent I got kinda interested and tried to see how high it could get). Ultimately load avg was more determined by the network interface on the machines than the cpus they had. Testing was done on pfsense firewalls and I was trying to see how low power consumption could be pushed without affecting performance. Firewalls are on all the time and spend a lot of that time at very low load if ur not servicing users at all hours.
@LearnLinuxTV2 жыл бұрын
Correct, the load average can go above the number of CPUs. I’ve seen it go to 500 and higher, to the point where the CPU is so pegged it can’t even authenticate an SSH session so you can even connect to it and fix it.
@christopherjackson21572 жыл бұрын
@@LearnLinuxTV I still think the 100 percent measurement is useful. As I understand it it's at that point that users will start noticing and making calls to IT
@sussusamogus783111 ай бұрын
clear and nice as always
@brads20412 жыл бұрын
Great video. Have not understood this
@paulov962610 ай бұрын
Nice analogy. BTW why not use the following one liner instead of scrolling up and down in /proc/cpuinfo: cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -i 'cpu cores'
@giovannicordova4803 Жыл бұрын
Do those numbers still apply when using a virtual machine?
@13thravenpurple942 жыл бұрын
Great work 🥳🥳🥳 Thank you 💜💜💜
@cleightthejw22022 жыл бұрын
@Jay Just wanted to say you a great job with these vids Jay. And I also wanted to put a comment down just in case it truly does help with the algorithm stuff and your channel being promoted/recommended by GoogleTube..
@undergrounder2 жыл бұрын
Great video, thank you!
@DL-xf3ur2 жыл бұрын
Awesome as always Jay - Is it the number of CPUs or Cores that has to be reached in the load average for it to be 100% used. I noticed you said 2 for your example but your cpuinfo shows that you have a multicore system. Thanks!
@dragomirmari2 жыл бұрын
Really helpful video!!!
@mihai6564 Жыл бұрын
good video
@anoldslowhorse2 жыл бұрын
really interesting, thanks ...
@ChrisPavey852 жыл бұрын
If you run 'grep -c "processor" /proc/cpuinfo' it will return the number of logical CPUs
@ericjohnson59902 жыл бұрын
Hey Jay! Have you tried the system 76 darter pro recently? I ask because I just purchased one and wanted to know your thoughts on it.
@sirbumblefuck2 жыл бұрын
One can also run nproc to find out number of cores they have.
@josepuga55296 ай бұрын
nproc: this simple command tells you how many processor your machine has.
@sotecluxan42212 жыл бұрын
@kevinding57709 ай бұрын
how does load average calculated? when my load average is 12 and I have 8 cpu corea, my android phone is not janky.
@terryc71422 жыл бұрын
Why, if you're running a 32-core EPYC CPU, did /proc/cpuinfo show 'cpu cores: 1" ? That makes no sense to me. For this VM, you have at least 2 cores. Shouldn't it say 2 or 32?
@FinderX2 жыл бұрын
If you know how to use pipe and grep this will help to see how many CPU more easily: cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
@lawrencedoliveiro91042 жыл бұрын
grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo
@mohitsharma-ep9iy11 ай бұрын
i have 2 cores and 2 threads per core so it makes 4 CPUs , so I have 4 CPUs , so does that mean i have 4 cores or 4 threads , and if it will have 4 threads then why are you saying you have 2 cores because youe have 1 core and 2 threads so that makes it 2 CPUs. So please explain this ?
@BrianLongoria2 жыл бұрын
Cool
@rashie2 жыл бұрын
👍👍
@guilherme50942 жыл бұрын
👍
@nymnicholas2 жыл бұрын
Wait a min, you have 48 Cores for Desktop and calculations based on load average based with CPU... ok, Overkill. The load then, will never reach 48.0 unless it's trying to compile, maybe the Linux kernel 48 times at 1 go [maybe the only way to know is to try it] Peace :-)
@_den_2 жыл бұрын
Once again I wasted my time on you. And you didn't even mention how disk handling affects this parameter.