So what does this mean about your system?

Well, for a quick example lets consider the output below. The load average of a system can typically be found by running top or uptime and users typically dont need any special privileges for these commands.

load averages: 2.43, 2.96, 3.41
Here we see the one minute load average is 2.43, five minute is 2.96, and fifteen minute load average is 3.41.
Here are some conclusions we can draw from this.


  • On average, over the past one minute there have been 2.43 processes running or waiting for a resource
  • Overall the load is on a down-trend since the average number of processes running or waiting in the past minute (2.43) is lower than the average running or waiting over the past 5 minutes (2.96) and 15 minutes (3.41)
  • This system is busy, but we cannot conclude how busy solely from load averages.

It is important here to mention that the load average does not take into account the number of processes. Another critical detail is that processes could be waiting for any number of things including CPU, disk, or network.

So what we do know is that a system that has a load average significantly higher than the number of CPUs is probably pretty busy, or bogged down by some bottleneck. Conversely a system which has a load average significantly lower than the number of CPUs is probably doing just fine.