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average cpu load = 3% is that high?

i am running the perfect debian setup (pretty much from the guide). The only differences is vhcs2 is running my virtual hosting. I don't have anything too funky running so i am wondering if this average of 3% all the time is quite high for a pentium 2.4ghz with 1gb of ram?

ps aux tells me that

root 4261 3.4 0.1 7300 1912 ? R Sep12 1114:16 /usr/sbin/saslauthd -m /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd -r -a rimap -O 127.0.0.1
root 4262 3.4 0.1 7300 1920 ? R Sep12 1119:30 /usr/sbin/saslauthd -m /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd -r -a rimap -O 127.0.0.1

www-data 15880 0.4 1.4 27680 15228 ? S 23:31 0:06 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 15916 0.3 1.5 28100 15680 ? S 23:31 0:05 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16003 0.3 1.4 27656 15148 ? S 23:31 0:04 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
amavis 16056 0.0 3.0 34248 31644 ? S 23:35 0:00 amavisd (child)
www-data 16661 0.5 1.4 27172 14680 ? S 23:46 0:03 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16663 0.3 1.2 25576 12876 ? S 23:46 0:02 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16686 0.3 1.2 25648 13136 ? S 23:48 0:01 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16820 0.3 1.2 25608 13004 ? S 23:51 0:01 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16821 0.3 1.1 24740 12308 ? S 23:51 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16822 0.4 1.2 25600 13044 ? S 23:51 0:01 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16945 0.4 1.1 24732 12064 ? S 23:54 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16976 0.6 1.3 26032 13384 ? S 23:55 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL
www-data 16991 0.5 1.1 24540 11860 ? S 23:55 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start -DSSL

these are the main processes.

Also, my system ram only ever has about 20mb free? Is this efficient use of ram , i.e using ALL the ram or is it quite high too?

the server seems to be running ok though.

Linux tries to allocate as much as making sense and buffers many things. For you it looks like the ram is completely used...
(more: cat /proc/meminfo)

Quote:

Originally Posted by adam

Also, my system ram only ever has about 20mb free? Is this efficient use of ram , i.e using ALL the ram or is it quite high too?

As Ben said, Linux caches lots of things, so your memory usage is ok.

what about the cpu use though?

in my eyes 3% is not very high, but you have to distinguish load from cpuusage.
Next thing is, what applications are running on your server and the intensity they are used... so you can't say a cpu usage of x percent is high or low without knowing what really happens on that machine (even saying there are some webpages doing some "simple" DB-requests is too imprecise...)

yeah thats why i pasted the output of ps aux and listed the things that seemed to be taking up the most processing time. You can see ther that saslauthd is taking up 3.4% all the time .

I think your system is running fine. Nothing unusual here. :)

if i do a top command i get 3 processes for saslauthd

under %cpu all 3 processes are over 30.

the Cpu(s): reads 95-99% most of the time.

IS this defintely ok?

Can you post your top output?

Code:

top - 17:57:23 up 26 days,  3:36,  1 user,  load average: 3.54, 3.46, 3.38

Tasks:  78 total,   5 running,  73 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie

Cpu(s): 95.4% us,  3.7% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.5% hi,  0.5% si Mem:   1027912k total,  1014788k used,    13124k free,    72776k buffers

Swap:  2096472k total,        0k used,  2096472k free,   695556k cached

 Unknown command - try 'h' for help

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND

 4264 root      25   0  7300 1916 6908 R 26.5  0.2   2797:44 saslauthd

 4261 root      25   0  7300 1912 6908 R 23.8  0.2   2793:09 saslauthd

 4262 root      25   0  7300 1920 6908 R 23.3  0.2   2798:22 saslauthd

19070 www-data  16   0 25800  12m  19m S  4.6  1.2   0:00.10 apache2

18998 www-data  15   0 25752  12m  19m S  4.1  1.3   0:00.36 apache2

18414 www-data  15   0 25680  12m  19m S  2.7  1.3   0:02.17 apache2

18500 www-data  15   0 25648  12m  19m S  2.7  1.3   0:01.60 apache2 18880 www-data  15   0 25688  12m  19m S  2.3  1.3   0:00.32 apache2

18833 www-data  15   0 25948  13m  19m S  1.8  1.3   0:00.53 apache2

18956 www-data  15   0 24816  11m  19m S  1.8  1.2   0:00.28 apache2

19043 www-data  15   0 24792  11m  19m S  1.8  1.2   0:00.10 apache2

17241 www-data  15   0 25840  12m  19m S  1.4  1.3   0:05.08 apache2

17986 www-data  15   0 25564  12m  19m S  1.4  1.3   0:02.68 apache2

28587 root      16   0 23608  10m  19m S  0.5  1.0   0:03.13 apache2

19057 root      16   0  2064 1056 1852 R  0.5  0.1   0:00.01 top

    1 root      16   0  1504  512 1352 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.19 init

    2 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0

    3 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 ksoftirqd/0

    4 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:02.84 events/0

    5 root       6 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper

    6 root      15 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid

   37 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.16 kblockd/0

   49 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:10.96 kswapd0

   50 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0

  186 root      25   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod

  315 root      16   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   1:44.50 kjournald

 1286 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd

 3946 root      16   0  2260  796 2092 S  0.0  0.1   0:30.36 syslogd

 3949 root      16   0  2384 1492 1344 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.54 klogd

 3967 amavis    16   0 33852  30m 5220 S  0.0  3.0   0:05.55 amavisd-new

 3976 clamav    16   0 51504  31m 3812 S  0.0  3.1   3:11.42 clamd

 4017 clamav    15   0  4244 1628 3888 S  0.0  0.2   0:02.77 freshclam

 4051 root      19   0  1496  444 1344 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 inetd

 4260 root      16   0  7300 1920 6908 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.01 saslauthd

 4263 root      15   0  7300 1920 6908 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.01 saslauthd

 4298 daemon    16   0  1684  628 1520 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 atd

 4310 root      16   0  1492  468 1336 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 vhcs2_daemon

 4341 root      16   0  1500  484 1336 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty

 4347 root      16   0  1500  484 1336 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty

 4348 root      16   0  1500  484 1336 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty

 4349 root      16   0  1500  484 1336 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty

 4350 root      16   0  1500  484 1336 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty

 4356 root      16   0  1500  484 1336 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty

 5192 root      15   0  2476  732 2164 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.04 couriertcpd

 5194 root      15   0  1672  464 1360 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 courierlogger

 5205 root      16   0  2476  732 2164 S  0.0  0.1   0:02.99 couriertcpd

 5207 root      15   0  1672  464 1360 S  0.0  0.0   0:03.28 courierlogger

14981 root      25   0  3800 1332 3556 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.01 mysqld_safe

here it is :)