Re: 1.3.76 and Load Averages?

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi)
Thu, 21 Mar 1996 08:08:33 +0200 (EET)


On Wed, 20 Mar 1996, Mark E. Levitt wrote:
>
> I've noticed the same thing. Load avergaes are significantly increased
> under 1.3.76 with otherwise the same configuration/running software.

Note that this may well be due to the new load-average code rather than
anything else.. You may see artificially high load averages because the
place where the load average is computed is different..

The calculations are now done in a bottom half handler ("software
interrupt"), not inside the actual timer interrupt - this may well give
slightly different behaviour, especially for code that uses network stuff
(and select()), because we're now more likely to calculate the load
averages at just the moment when any network activity has taken place..

So you shouldn't be worried unless you actually _feel_ that it's slower
(remove the "xload" stuff first, because otherwise it will unconsciously
make you assume the machine is slower ;-)

Linus