How to Check System Load Average under Linux?


The System Load Average is one of the important indicators of the system status. Usually, the ideal system average should be equal to the number of cores. e.g. 1 core leads to load average 1 and 2 cores leads to load average 2 etc.

There are 3 ways to check the system load average, the first one should be using command uptime. It gives the load average for the past 1, 5 and 15 minutes together with the system uptime.

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19:28:23 up 5 days, 21:16,  1 user,  load average: 0.16, 0.08, 0.10
19:28:23 up 5 days, 21:16,  1 user,  load average: 0.16, 0.08, 0.10

The second method is cat /proc/loadavg this directly gives 3 numbers, the past 1, 5 and 15 minutes system load average. The last two values are he number of active / total scheduling entities (tasks) and the PID of the last created process in the system.

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0.21 0.10 0.10 2/207 31839
0.21 0.10 0.10 2/207 31839

The last method is the w which prints who is logged on and what they are doing.

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 19:30:07 up 5 days, 21:18,  1 user,  load average: 0.13, 0.10, 0.10
USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
root   pts/0    host90-152-1-212 Sun12    7.00s  0.40s  0.34s sshd: root[p
 19:30:07 up 5 days, 21:18,  1 user,  load average: 0.13, 0.10, 0.10
USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
root   pts/0    host90-152-1-212 Sun12    7.00s  0.40s  0.34s sshd: root[p

The JCPU time is the time used by all processes attached to the tty. It does not include past background jobs, but does include currently running background jobs. The PCPU time is the time used by the current process, named in the “what” field.

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —

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