[ILUG] System load explained.

[Steve McConville]

> load average is the average number of processes running over 15s, 1min and
> 5mins

Just to be pedantic (sorry) - load averages are the arithmetic means
of the number of processes *ready for execution but not running* over
the time periods given above. Often this means they are waiting on
cpu.

vmstat and iostat will help you to isolate the problem

-- 
steev
http://www.daikaiju.org.uk/~steve/