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Understanding system load averages

Understanding system load averages
Learn how to view and interpret system load averages on your server.

This article explains how to check and understand system load averages.

Viewing system load averages
For reseller hosting accounts, WebHost Manager displays system load averages at the top of the page.

cPanel does not show load averages directly, but you can check them anytime by running:

uptime

Note
The uptime command shows the same load average information that WebHost Manager provides.

Sample output from uptime:

username@server [~]# uptime
 21:19:12 up 388 days, 17:32,  0 users,  load average: 5.85, 5.98, 6.18

Interpreting system load averages
The three numbers in the load average output correspond to the system load over the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes:

load average: 5.85, 5.98, 6.18

These numbers represent the count of processes waiting to use the CPU cores.

  • A completely idle system has a load average of 0.
  • A single-core CPU with one process running at 100% would have a load average of 1.0.
  • On a multi-core CPU, a load average equal to the number of cores indicates full utilization.

For example, the load averages above would indicate severe overloading on a single-core system but are normal on a system with eight or more CPU cores.

To determine the number of CPU cores on your server, run:

nproc --all

This command outputs the total number of CPU cores, which helps you accurately interpret the load averages for your account.