hi guys. I run 'top' to see server load but how do i inteprete the readings?

YOu can set Delay between updates with s switch, u can quit from top q switch.

thanks

But what i am trying to find out is how to understand the readings it shows on the screen

The display is divided into two sections. The top section contains information related to overall system status — uptime, load average, process counts, CPU status, and utilization statistics for both memory and swap space. The lower section displays process-level statistics, the exact nature of which can be controlled while top is running.

for more info about top command
man top

10:37:56 up 19 days, 17:27, 1 user, load average: 0.91, 1.27, 1.40
138 processes: 136 sleeping, 1 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: cpu user nice system irq softirq iowait idle
total 1.3% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 7.6% 90.9%
cpu00 2.3% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 7.9% 89.6%
cpu01 0.3% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 7.3% 92.2%
Mem: 511728k av, 442292k used, 69436k free, 0k shrd, 52432k buff
203124k actv, 31660k in_d, 6664k in_c
Swap: 1020088k av, 76656k used, 943432k free 71600k cached


What about the CPU states..?

Mem used.. in_d and in_c ?

Is the above a high load server or still acceptable> USed for email and dns purposes

My load average hit about 2 in the morning.. is that figure acceptable?