Why is my load average always above 1 regardless of cpu usage?

My load average is often ridiculous. For example, when I wake from sleep it's usually 45 or so. Even when I'm doing nothing with the machine (CPU is about 10% in each core) I still see load averages of 1.2 to 1.6 or so. Why would this happen?
Is there a way to figure out what is causing the load?

Activity Monitor could see what happens on your MacBook.
Resetting SMC could solve the problem.
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

Similar Messages

Why screensaver always causes my macbook 100% cpu usage

screensaver always causes my macbook 100% cpu usage, my mac is ok when i use it, but when i leave it once the screensaver starts to run, the cpu fan start to rock and roll my desk which seems the cpu usage achieve 100%, it will be ok once it come back from screensaver, can someone help me on that? Thank you very much!!!!

Resetting an Apple portable's System Management Controller (SMC)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

MacBook Pro Retina 2013 load average constantly above 1

I have a recently purchased (3 month old) MacBook Pro Retina - Late 2013.
I've noticed that the load averages appear to be rather consistently high.
So after a fresh reboot, with nothing other than background applications and the dashboard running, I've noticed that the CPU load stays above 1.0
The CPU itself is idle, at 100% nearly all of the time, it certainly doesn't correspond to '1' unit of load on this system.
I suspect something is amiss but have been unable to figure anything out.
I have tried the instrutions for clearing the SMC and this does not appear to have sorted anything.
The in-built diagnostics suggest nothing is wrong.
Any thoughts?

Pre-Mavericks
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
Mavericks and later
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the View menu. Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.

High load averages, low CPU usage

HI,
I recently upgraded to Lion and I am noticing high load averages ~0.7 for my system. The CPU is, however ~95% idle. I am not running any intensive apps. I first thought it is an I/O issue, but I have almost 500 MB free memory, and there is no disk activity. The system is perfectly fine, with all the eye candy/animations running smoothly. Is this a bug?
Thanks for any help.

Same problem here
Did a clean install of Lion, moved everything manually. System was clean and running fast. Then, for some reason started to slow down after a few months. My last system (macbook snow leopard) was running fine for 3 years.
I noticed HIGH load averages (over 2.5!) while CPU is ideling (only 'round 30% for user and system). System is slow and CPU gets hot, resulting in loud fan noise.
Googled a lot, did standard maintenance tasks, tried to pinpoint cause - nothing so far. Will update when I find out more. Maybe someone else has a clue or Apple releases a fix. Fingers crossed.

One of 4 node RAC always have higher load averages and higher than others

Hello,
We have a 4 node rac, 9208 on linux 4. When viewing top, we noticed the same one node always have a higher load average than the other 3 nodes. Is this normal. Loan balance is working fine but this one node always have higher load average. This is the node where we do the rac installation. Thank you.

I do not remember what is the default for clb_goal (client load balancing) for 9i but 10g is LONG.
check it
select clb_goal from dba_services where name = <service name>
you may have to change from LONG to SHORT OR SHORT to LONG depending your connection types.
dbms_service.MODIFY_SERVICE(‘<service>’,clb_goal=> dbms_service.CLB_GOAL_LONG);
Read the following article.
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/article.php/3659411/Oracle-RAC-Administration---Part-15-Connection-Load-Balancing-and-FAN.htm

Why the Maximum Frequency is almost always above 100%

I have got an HP Elitebook 8460p running Windows 7 x64. It is about 4 years old and recently the fan seems to be working extra hour so I started to investigate what could be wrong. I cleaned up what I could see.
I have been monitoring my PCs behavior thru the "Resource Monitor", so far the only thing I found strange is that the CPU Maximum Frequency indicator is almost always above the 100% mark. CPU Usage behaves fine, I mean it goes up and down according to the what I am doing but not that Frequency which seems to very rarely go under 90% and most of the time is about 108%.
Should I be worried about this and is there anything I could do to improve this, asuming this is wrong ?

Dear Corobori -
I understand you are concerned that your pc is running at 100%.
You should try running a virus scan.
A good virus program is MalwareBytes. If you don't already have it, there is a freeware version to download.
https://www.malwarebytes.org/downloads/
I hope this resolves the issue for you.
dhtp
DH
I work on behalf of HP.
Please click "KUDOS Thumbs Up" if I have helped you, and click "Accept as Solution" if your problem is solved. Thanks for the feedback!

Load averages over 1.00 after upgrading to Mavericks

Hi,
I have recently upgraded to OS X Mavericks on my old Macbook Pro (Late-2007, 4GB RAM) and I noticed that the load averages are always above 1.00, even when CPU is almost 100% idle. I know load averages don't reflect only CPU but after a reboot I see the same. Could this be because it's an old Macbook and it takes more resources from it to run the new OS X 10.9? This is so strange.
Thanks for reading!
L.

I'm having the same "issue" since I first upgraded to Mavericks from Lion. At first I thought it had something to do with the way processes are scheduled/handled in Mavericks but now I realize that I DO get load averages below 1.0 (~0.7-0.8, never below this), but only when completely idle.
I have an early 2011 Macbook 2.7 GHz i7with 16 GB RAM, so I find this kinda weird.
Are you using any particular applications/extensions?
(see also http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/106828/avg-load-goes-up-after-upgrading -to-mavericks, altough there is no solution here).

Load average peaks every ~3 hours

Hi all. I have a quick question, which should be easy to solve, but I haven't been able to yet.
Approximately every 3.2 hours (the period is very regular, and a bit more than 3 hours), the load average on my XServe climbs up to 1.0, stays there for a few minutes, then falls back down to its average level (normally less than 0.1). (I've graphed it out which is why I know it's so regular). But I haven't for the life of me been able to figure out what's doing this. When it spikes up like that, 'top' still shows a relatively idle CPU (~95% idle), 'ps alx' shows only the 'ps' command itself having an 'R' STAT flag, and 'sudo fs_usage' shows periodic bits of activity, but nothing crazy. How can I find out what's going on? I know that a load average of 1.0 isn't all that high and the server still feels responsive during these spikes, but it should be mostly idling closer to 0.0. I want to make sure that if something is starting to bog down the server that I nip it in the bud before it starts to become a real issue.
Any advice on what might be causing this, or what I can use to figure out what's contributing to the load average during these times?
Thanks!
Dan

Good point about Remote Desktop and Chicken of the
VNC. When the server was originally set up remotely
several years ago, I didn't have a fast enough
Internet connection to make remote GUI concepts like
those practical at all (ever try running them through
dialup?), so I quickly became a fan of the command
I already had an ADSL line when I discovered VNC, but if anyone rmembers Timbuctu..
It was a commercial program that did the same thing as VNC, but with a different approach.
I used it with a 14400 baud modem under System 7.5. I could see the menus drawing themselves... =:-|
line. Perhaps I should revisit it now that I have a
broadband connection, but Mac user though I am, I've
always been a Unix command line guy at heart
Good. It helps a lot.
I'm still descovering some new unix conterpart of many of the system GUI programs.
And as far as the cron jobs go, according to the
various files in /var/cron/tabs, I have a few entries
that are set to run at specific times per day, but
nothing of a periodic nature of every few hours. And
the strange thing is that it isn't periodic by an
integer number of hours - it's periodic by a bit over
3 hours. From the graphs I've made of load average,
its periodicity is very close to 3.2 hours. I also
Hmm.. You're right.
cron is scheduling jobs by the hour, minutes,etc, but not a mix of them. Unless its scheduled every 200 minuts (or so).
checked with 'ps aux' and there don't seem to be any
hung processes or something that's been running for
an inordinate amount of time, other than those
processes which started when the server was
originally booted.
The server has been running since July 28, 2006 (297
days) and only recently (within the past week or so)
started to exhibit this behavior as far as I know.
Hmm.. This could point to some system update..
No processes are currently running with an abnormal
amount of CPU time taken - currently, the lead is
pretty much a tie between 'hwmond' and 'configd',
with about 2700 minutes each. This works out to
about 9 minutes/day, so it doesn't seem too bad to
me.
I know, I could just reboot the machine and see if
the problem goes away. But there are two main
reasons I haven't done so. First, I really want to
know what's happening, and even if rebooting the
machine does fix the problem, I won't have learned
anything from it and there would be nothing to
prevent this from happening again. And secondly, I
Holy words. You're **** right.
had a bad experience once where rebooting the machine
remotely didn't run smoothly - for some reason, the
primary hard drive didn't spin up quick enough to be
recognized, and it booted into its secondary recovery
hard drive, which didn't enable me any kind of remote
access to the machine... so it meant several hours of
downtime while I drove to the XServe's location to
manually restart it again. The box's availability is
critical to a business' operations, so I don't want
to risk the possibility of downtime unless all else
fails.
Ok. Sorry I could be of no help anymore, but it's difficult to understand sitting in front of a (far away) screen.
This seem one of those "Sherlock Holmes" cases.. You need to take everything into account and if all fails what remains, though unlikely, is the truth.
(This shoud be a citation)
Dan
Ciao,
Ermanno

[SOLVED] High load average in X at idle

Hello Archers,
Recently my laptop has been showing abnormally high 1-minute load averages (~0.20-0.80 on a dual-core machine) at idle whenever I have X running. This figure has always settled down to 0.00 after a while, and indeed it does when I exit to the console. What's puzzling is that top reports a less-extreme 2-3% CPU usage number, with X taking 1% at most (still high, though, considering I'm running a very lightweight DWM setup). To be sure, this does heat up the CPU noticeably. I don't think I've changed anything on my system except for routine updating, and I've made sure my .xinitrc script isn't the culprit.
Any ideas on why this is?
EDIT: Marked as [SOLVED].
Last edited by ktkhuong (2010-08-27 00:28:45)

Kernel .35.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=103346
Last edited by karol (2010-08-26 10:33:35)

ODSEE 11g - DPS Directory proxy server suddenly increase load average

Hi all
Recently upgraded from directory server 5.2 to ODSEE 11g, one directory proxy configure to one master directory server and one consumer directory server.
all the three instances are in the same sparc t3 machine.
Directory proxy server alerts server load average on the machine is above 6.00 normally it is 0.66. I'm not sure what is causing the sudden burst in the load ? the traffic is normal there is no abnormal requests coming to the server. proxy performance degrades over the span of 24 hours ....and Once i restart the proxy services (dpsadm restart) all load averages comes to normal and directory proxy runs normal for the next two - three weeks. The same cycle continues ...I'm not sure what was causing the sudden load increase.
I increased the JVM heap size from 1GB to 2 GB still continue to have the problem ..did anyone else experience similar problem. How did you fix it....
Any input or advise in the right direction is much appreciated.
Thank you.

server load I'm referring to "prstat command" - server load average suddenly shoot up from 0.66 to 6.00 ie) the CPU usage. Alert is from our server monitoring tool not related to directory proxy.
Clients report connections time out (etime goes from etime=0 ..2..4.....) over 24 hours i can see the etime increases and eventually the proxy server get hung and non responsive. Once I restart all the performance back to normal at-least for another two weeks.
I suspect there might be a memory leak or JVM Garbage collection issue -- any expert input how to figure this out will help.
Here is the JVM args in the proxy server "Xms2g -Xmx2g -Xmn1g -XX:SurvivorRatio=4 -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC"
Here is a jstat during the problem
./jstat -gcutil -t 25365 2s 30
Timestamp S0 S1 E O P YGC YGCT FGC FGCT GCT
982106.4 0.00 26.17 4.26 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 689 1002.587 1063.566
982108.4 0.00 26.17 4.40 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 689 1002.587 1063.566
982110.4 0.00 26.17 4.80 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 689 1002.587 1063.566
982112.4 0.00 26.17 5.10 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 690 1002.719 1063.698
982114.4 0.00 26.17 5.15 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 690 1002.719 1063.698
982116.4 0.00 26.17 5.32 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 691 1003.009 1063.988
982118.4 0.00 26.17 5.72 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 691 1003.009 1063.988
982120.4 0.00 26.17 5.80 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 691 1003.009 1063.988
982122.4 0.00 26.17 5.93 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 692 1003.168 1064.146
982124.4 0.00 26.17 6.03 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 692 1003.168 1064.146
982126.4 0.00 26.17 6.15 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 693 1003.481 1064.460
982128.5 0.00 26.17 6.18 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 693 1003.481 1064.460
982130.5 0.00 26.17 6.25 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 693 1003.481 1064.460
982132.5 0.00 26.17 6.29 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 694 1003.656 1064.635
982134.5 0.00 26.17 6.31 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 694 1003.656 1064.635
982136.5 0.00 26.17 6.36 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 695 1003.988 1064.967
982138.5 0.00 26.17 6.89 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 695 1003.988 1064.967
982140.5 0.00 26.17 6.99 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 695 1003.988 1064.967
982142.5 0.00 26.17 7.08 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 696 1004.187 1065.165
982144.5 0.00 26.17 7.31 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 696 1004.187 1065.165
982146.5 0.00 26.17 7.82 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 697 1004.553 1065.531
982148.5 0.00 26.17 7.92 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 697 1004.553 1065.531
982150.5 0.00 26.17 8.01 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 697 1004.553 1065.531
982152.5 0.00 26.17 8.17 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 698 1004.786 1065.764
982154.5 0.00 26.17 8.26 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 698 1004.786 1065.764
982156.5 0.00 26.17 8.38 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 699 1005.174 1066.153
982158.5 0.00 26.17 8.74 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 699 1005.174 1066.153
982160.5 0.00 26.17 8.88 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 699 1005.174 1066.153
982162.5 0.00 26.17 8.96 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 700 1005.433 1066.412
982164.5 0.00 26.17 9.09 92.25 59.52 523 60.979 700 1005.433 1066.412
jstat after the restart
./jstat -gcutil -t 10084 2s 30
Timestamp S0 S1 E O P YGC YGCT FGC FGCT GCT
40312.6 0.00 25.13 88.49 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40314.6 0.00 25.13 88.58 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40316.6 0.00 25.13 88.71 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40318.6 0.00 25.13 88.99 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40320.6 0.00 25.13 89.31 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40322.6 0.00 25.13 89.36 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40324.6 0.00 25.13 89.42 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40326.6 0.00 25.13 89.53 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40328.6 0.00 25.13 89.60 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40330.6 0.00 25.13 89.72 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40332.6 0.00 25.13 90.11 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40334.6 0.00 25.13 90.56 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40336.6 0.00 25.13 90.67 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40338.6 0.00 25.13 90.75 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40340.6 0.00 25.13 91.09 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40342.6 0.00 25.13 91.36 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40344.6 0.00 25.13 91.47 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40346.6 0.00 25.13 91.53 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40348.7 0.00 25.13 91.64 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40350.7 0.00 25.13 91.77 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40352.7 0.00 25.13 91.87 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40354.7 0.00 25.13 91.95 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40356.7 0.00 25.13 92.11 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40358.7 0.00 25.13 92.19 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40360.7 0.00 25.13 92.24 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40362.7 0.00 25.13 92.85 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40364.7 0.00 25.13 93.19 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40366.7 0.00 25.13 93.40 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40368.7 0.00 25.13 93.44 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
40370.7 0.00 25.13 93.47 1.98 63.68 21 2.366 0 0.000 2.366
Any one else had similar behavior. Any input to the right direction is highly appreciated.
Thanks.

Very high "load average" in top

Hi,
our OES11SP1 two-server-cluster (fully patched) shows a very high "load
average" (>50, up to 110) in top in some circumstances. There are no
problems in normal operation, but administrator actions like shutdown or
cluster migrate might trigger the problem.
For example when I enter 'halt', then there is the following line in
/var/log/messages:
Sep 12 20:27:18 srv1 shutdown[14675]: shutting down for system halt
more than 20 minutes later:
Sep 12 20:51:19 srv1 init: Switching to runlevel: 0
Within thes 20 minutes nothing happens, but "average load" goes up to at
least 50, with ndsd at top. Access to storage related tools and commands is
not possible, for example 'nss /pool' hangs without any output.
This happens on nearly every shutdown, but from time to time it doesn't. The
same will sometimes be triggered by a cluster migrate.
This only happens with our OES11SP1 cluster, it does not happen with OES11
and OES2SP3; the only other difference I'm aware of: Novell CIFS is only
running on the OES11SP1 cluster.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Mirko

Sorry for the delay, it seems it's a bad habit of me to ask questions
immediately before holidays...
Yes, these servers have replicas, all of them... Cache size is set to 195328
KB, which is about twice the DIB size. IIRC this was a recommendation I read
somewhere at Novell. But I'll check that information again.
Thanks,
Mirko
kjhurni wrote:
>
> Mirko Guldner;2283539 Wrote:
>> top shows ndsd on top - but it's there in normal operation too, so I
>> don't
>> know if this means something.. (?) And it's not always the CPU which is
>> at
>> 100% - I have an example screenshot with: load average 50.20, 51.61,
>> 41.0
>> 3.2%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 77.0%id 18%wa 0.0%hi 0.3%si 0.0%st. But this is
>> only
>> an example - this differs.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mirko
>>
>> kjhurni wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Mirko Guldner;2283448 Wrote:
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> our OES11SP1 two-server-cluster (fully patched) shows a very high
>> "load
>> >> average" (>50, up to 110) in top in some circumstances. There are no
>> >> problems in normal operation, but administrator actions like
>> shutdown
>> >> or
>> >> cluster migrate might trigger the problem.
>> >>
>> >> For example when I enter 'halt', then there is the following line in
>> >> /var/log/messages:
>> >>
>> >> Sep 12 20:27:18 srv1 shutdown[14675]: shutting down for system halt
>> >>
>> >> more than 20 minutes later:
>> >>
>> >> Sep 12 20:51:19 srv1 init: Switching to runlevel: 0
>> >>
>> >> Within thes 20 minutes nothing happens, but "average load" goes up
>> to
>> >> at
>> >> least 50, with ndsd at top. Access to storage related tools and
>> commands
>> >> is
>> >> not possible, for example 'nss /pool' hangs without any output.
>> >>
>> >> This happens on nearly every shutdown, but from time to time it
>> doesn't.
>> >> The
>> >> same will sometimes be triggered by a cluster migrate.
>> >>
>> >> This only happens with our OES11SP1 cluster, it does not happen with
>> >> OES11
>> >> and OES2SP3; the only other difference I'm aware of: Novell CIFS is
>> >> only
>> >> running on the OES11SP1 cluster.
>> >>
>> >> Any ideas?
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >> Mirko
>> >
>> > Which process(es) does top show as being the culprit?
>> >
>> > In the past (on OES2 SP3) we had issues with CIFS causing ncp to
>> cause
>> > high utilization, but that was fixed a while ago.
>> >
>> > --Kevin
>> >
>> >
>
> I have seen ncp issues cause high ndsd utilization, but we've not yet
> upgraded our cluster or DS servers to OES11 yet (waiting for new
> hardware to go in place first).
>
> Out of curiosity, are the servers with high utilization also replica
> servers? For some reason, during one of our upgrades on a replica
> server (we have a server that contains all R/W copies of everything),
> the cache size got set down really low and that caused all sorts of
> issues.
>
> Maybe one of my collegues will wander by and offer additional insight,
> as this may be eDir related and/or NCP related. Not sure if triggering
> a core manually would help (but you'd have to send that to Novell and
> open an SR to get it read).
>
> IF you suspect CIFS, do you have the ability to temporarily shut off
> CIFS for like a few days to see if that's the culprit?
>
>

Calculating load averages

Generic_137111-02 sun4v sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise-T5220 Solaris 10:
I have couple of questions:
1. mpstat shows it has 63 CPUs but the spec says T5220 have 8 cores.
2. I don't understand what is threading technology in CPUs. What's the difference as compared to cores
3. How do I calculate load averages? When I do a top I don't know how to convert it into this CPU threading technology. How do I know if machine is overloaded

The Niagara processor is designed so there can be 8 parallel simultaneous threads (Hardware threads) running on a single core.
The T2 processor (Niagara 2) is capable of 8 cores, each capable of 8 parallel threads. So, effectively one T2 can run 64 threads simultaneously.
[http://blogs.sun.com/glennf/entry/getting_past_go_with_sparc|http://blogs.sun.com/glennf/entry/getting_past_go_with_sparc]
[http://blogs.sun.com/glennf/tags/cmt|http://blogs.sun.com/glennf/tags/cmt]
I'd recommend going through these two links (see above). It will save you a lot of grief when you go from single-threaded admins to multi-threaded admins.

Unusual load averages?

I've been studying Linux, getting ready to do some certifications, and I would appreciate some help understanding differences in load averages...
On my desktop, an 8-core i7-2600k, load will be between 0.01 to 0.70 for idle to moderate usage. This coincides with all I've learnt so far.
On my laptop, an 8-core i7-3612QM, load will be between 1.00 to 60.00 for idle to light usage, now and then randomly peaking to around 130.00.
Why the huge difference?
How important is load average in the professional world?
By moderate, I mean: 10 browser tabs; music playing; a virtual machine; a text editor and three terminal windows.
By light, I mean: 2 browser tabs and three terminal windows.
Figures were shown by both htop and i3status bar.
Thanks for listening.

What browser do you use? I've seen Firefox use high loads while seemingly doing nothing... there's a few bug reports on this. Also see if you can reproduce it with certain sites (bad javascript, flash, e.a)
But really, don't just look at the averages, but at which applications cause them.
Last edited by Alad (2015-05-14 13:06:57)

[Solved] Excessive high load average

My laptop seems to have an very excessive high load average. My system gets very slow even when I'm running openbox with a browser, terminal and music player. That is enough to make applications freeze for a few seconds. I've seen the load average goes higher 5.00. Right now I just logged in openbox using lxdm, open a browser and a terminal and my load average is 23:11:21 up 12 min, 2 users, load average: 1.15, 0.92, 0.58.
$ top
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1367 root 20 0 48140 2392 1832 R 100 0.1 7:39.51 lxdm-binary
1411 jesse 20 0 402m 9800 7176 S 1 0.2 0:03.10 indicator-multi
1370 root 20 0 110m 14m 6388 S 0 0.4 0:03.50 X
1479 jesse 20 0 263m 13m 10m S 0 0.3 0:00.99 terminal
1 root 20 0 4180 692 592 S 0 0.0 0:00.61 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
8 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/1:0
As yon can see the process 1367 is using 100% of the cpu. I have no idea why this is happening. Also my laptop isn't old. It has intel i5 processor with 4gm ram.
Anybody has an idea of what is happening?
EDIT: I just checked my load average again
[jesse@myarch ~]$ uptime
23:23:46 up 24 min, 3 users, load average: 4.42, 2.19, 1.25
That is an absurd value, isn't is? Ah, and my system is up to date, if anyone asks.
Last edited by sollidsnake (2012-02-17 12:35:34)

well it looks like back in december there were some bugs reported with libglib2.0-0 2.31.2 that where causing this issue you can try updating to make sure you have the most current version.
pacman -S glib2

Load averages lion

load average is much higher using Lion. Running above 2 since installing Lion. Using top cannot find any stuck process. CPU usage is low. Something about the way lion runs or ????

I have an iMAC 27" with 16GBs of RAM running 10.7.2 and see 4 stuck processes. I get terminal (not responding) due to stuck processes I believe. Finder as well, as mail accessing SMB shares or other types remote servers results in a hang in the file selection dialogue.

Why is my load average always above 1 regardless of cpu usage?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for