Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Constant Load 1.00+ on new Toshiba laptop

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 4:57 PM, Beau Henderson <beau@××××××××××××.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 1:18 AM, James <wireless@×××××××××××.com> wrote:
>>
>>  <podge <at> podgeweb.com> writes:
>>
>>
>> > > I was wondering if anyone might have any idea's as to what is causing
>> > > my
>> > > new Toshiba A300 Satelite to idle at a load of 1.00 when not in use.
>> > > Right
>> > > after boot up it settles at 1.00 when I do nothing. I'm not seeing
>> > > anything
>> > > out of ordinary in dmesg ( asside from an non issue with legacy usb
>> > > and sd
>> > > and sr drivers in the kernel ).
>>
>> Ah,
>>
>> I have had a similar problem a few months ago on one system (AMD 64 X2).
>> I never figured it out, but I suspect that rebuilding X, KDE and many
>> other utilities over time, fixed it. X seems to use more resources than
>> it should. But, in reality, after a while, it just went away. None of the
>> other AMD 64 X2 systems I manage, had the problem. The load was always 1.0
>> or higher.
>>
>>
>> I think I even posted to this list and we discussed the meaning of "load"
>> too.
>>
>> Here's some good reading on "load average"
>>
>> http://www.teamquest.com/resources/gunther/display/5/
>>
>>
>
> Hey,
>
> I'm fairly comfortable with the definition of load average, that's not
> something I need clarification on, but thanks to all whom have offered.
>
> I'll fire up htop today and see if its able to identify anything that top or
> ps hasn't as yet.
>
> I'm relatively certain the issue isn't related to X or gnome as the load
> shoots up immediately after boot up and the load issue happens even without
> firing up startx.

I wonder if the laptop could be going into some low-speed, low-power
mode, causing it to seem "slow" and thus making the load seem
artificially high? (assuming you're using CPU frequency scaling at
all)