I am trying to understand the load average on my system when idle. Here are some results after the system has been running for a few hours, with almost nothing installed. vmstatroot@arm:~# vmstat 1procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa 0  0      0  62092  17860 135940    0    0     9    21  158  245  1  1 97  0 0  0      0  62092  17860 135940    0    0     0     0  105  137  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62060  17860 135940    0    0     0     0  105  128  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62060  17860 135940    0    0     0     0  105  174  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62060  17860 135940    0    0     0     0  105  155  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62092  17860 135940    0    0     0     0  105  134  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62092  17860 135940    0    0     0     0  105  127  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62092  17860 135940    0    0     0     0  106  133  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62092  17860 135940    0    0     0     0  105  129  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62092  17868 135940    0    0     0    52 2101 4081  0  4 95  1 0  0      0  62092  17868 135940    0    0     0     0  103  173  0  0 100  0 0  0      0  62060  17868 135940    0    0     0     0  103  129  0  0 100  0mpstatroot@arm:~# mpstat 1Linux 3.10.0 (arm)  03/25/15    _armv7l_    (1 CPU)20:02:04     CPU    %usr   %nice    %sys %iowait    %irq   %soft  %steal  %guest   %idle20:02:05     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:06     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:07     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:08     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:09     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:10     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:11     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:12     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:13     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.0020:02:14     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.99    0.00    0.00   99.0120:02:15     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.99    0.00    0.00   99.0120:02:16     all    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  100.00sarroot@arm:~# sarLinux 3.10.0 (arm)  03/25/15    _armv7l_    (1 CPU)17:53:42          LINUX RESTART17:54:01        CPU     %user     %nice   %system   %iowait    %steal     %idle17:55:01        all      0.25      0.00      0.63      0.00      0.00     99.1217:56:01        all      0.07      0.00      0.47      0.00      0.00     99.4717:57:01        all      0.25      0.00      0.43      0.02      0.00     99.3017:58:01        all      0.20      0.00      0.47      0.03      0.00     99.3017:59:02        all      0.13      0.00      0.30      0.03      0.00     99.5318:00:01        all      0.08      0.00      0.36      0.02      0.00     99.5418:01:01        all      0.12      0.00      0.45      0.02      0.00     99.4All three utliities have similar results. Now for top..toptop - 19:50:39 up  2:47,  1 user,  load average: 0.81, 0.77, 0.77Tasks:  50 total,   1 running,  49 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie%Cpu(s):  1.4 us,  0.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 97.3 id,  0.4 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.1 si,  0.0 stKiB Mem:    251692 total,   189540 used,    62152 free,    17724 buffersKiB Swap:        0 total,        0 used,        0 free,   135920 cached  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                5249 root      20   0  3100 1176  864 R  10.7  0.5   0:00.07 top                                       1 root      20   0  2104  708  612 S   0.0  0.3   0:01.16 init                                      2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kthreadd                                  3 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.05 ksoftirqd/0                               5 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:0H                              6 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.25 kworker/u2:0                              7 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.01 rcu_preempt                               8 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rcu_bh                                    9 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rcu_sched                                10 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper                                  11 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kdevtmpfs                               202 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 writeback                               204 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 bioset                                  206 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd                                 235 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd      Notice that the load average is [0.81, 0.77, 0.77]! Any idea to what's going on to cause such high load average?EDIT: This question isn't about what load average is.load average figures giving the number of jobs in the run queue (state R) or waiting for disk I/O (state D)How can there be state D processes if i/o is almost zero, and how are there so many jobs in the run queue? Is there a way to tell which jobs are on there?
Understanding high load average with vmstat, mpstat, sar, and top
linux;performance