[Nagiosplug-help] load plugin

[Volker Tanger]

Greetings!

Dan Stromberg wrote:
> 
> One of the suns is a critical server I look after for a client.  The
> plugin has been reporting some astonishingly high load average numbers
> for this machine.  We've been trying to convince the client for some
> time to upgrade this hardware.  If we can trust these numbers, this
> might be the information we need to get the upgrade.

Always remember:
	load != cpu usage

Load "returns the number of processes in the system run queue averaged 
over" the last 5 minutes (usually)
http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=3&topic=getloadavg

Load only is indicating that processes are waiting for ressources. That 
can be CPU time, but I/O (disk, net) or memory can be the bottlenecks 
quite as well.

For finding the culprit refer to tools like VMSTAT (Sun) or TOP (Linux, 
Sun optional). Those will show CPU usage for user/system/idle, but 
(swap) memory usage as well.

Bye

Volker Tanger
IT-Security Consulting

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