what is the solution to reduce load average??
 

Do you think I should increase RAM size but I see its having 3gb free mem, why it is not using and have the load average reduced? Please suggest on load avg reduction, its a 32bit one i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux


top - 16:40:43 up 173 days, 20:20, 13 users, load average: 4.62, 4.66, 4.34
Tasks: 438 total, 2 running, 429 sleeping, 0 stopped, 7 zombie
Cpu(s): 26.1%us, 17.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 51.3%id, 4.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.4%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 16624824k total, 16302036k used, 322788k free, 204580k buffers
Swap: 32772332k total, 88k used, 32772244k free, 8900548k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3125 mysql 25 0 2040m 1.8g 5380 R 215.2 11.7 677775:13 mysqld
14179 sym 25 0 1249m 339m 7292 S 100.1 2.1 356232:30 java
18741 sym 19 0 742m 121m 7308 S 18.6 0.7 6:21.05 java
25217 sym 25 0 1262m 303m 7320 S 7.3 1.9 55:02.65 java
26652 sym 25 0 1243m 285m 7296 S 3.0 1.8 29:31.28 java
7568 sym 25 0 1253m 179m 7288 S 2.7 1.1 11:30.75 java
7338 sym 25 0 753m 136m 7492 S 2.0 0.8 14:52.81 java
29481 root 25 0 1277m 499m 8532 S 1.0 3.1 44:52.47 java
17318 powerdev 15 0 2468 1236 800 R 0.7 0.0 0:00.03 top
547 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 3:55.05 ata/0
4628 zabbix 22 5 3292 1200 1088 S 0.3 0.0 266:54.45 zabbix_agentd
7393 sym 25 0 1251m 92m 7480 S 0.3 0.6 0:54.89 java
28221 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:08.08 pdflush
28381 sym 25 0 1231m 17m 6844 S 0.3 0.1 0:11.22 java
1 root 15 0 2072 624 532 S 0.0 0.0 1:24.36 init
2 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:13.25 migration/0
3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:02.18 ksoftirqd/0

~]$ vmstat 1 4
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu------
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
5 0 88 316668 204776 8890840 0 0 12 5 0 0 23 9 65 2 0
6 0 88 315808 204816 8891240 0 0 228 8820 1416 16104 31 8 60 1 0
6 0 88 315004 204852 8891844 0 0 112 4664 1483 24361 38 12 49 1 0
4 0 88 314136 204884 8892732 0 0 32 16704 1669 16617 30 10 54 5 0
[powerdev@bsnl ~]$

The load average has nothing to do with your RAM, so your RAM can't help here.
As I understand it, the load average shows how many processes are running at a given time. You also have to see that in relation to your CPU. If you have a quad-core CPU a load average of 4 is nothing bad, that is different on a single core CPU.
You want to reduce the load average? Start fewer processes.

Almost certainly not. If you were having swap traffic, there could have been a performance boost associated with reducing this traffic. But, you don't (over the very limited sampling period) have traffic to or from swap, so that performance boost cannot result.

Because, it hasn't been able to use it for anything.

Well, in certain circumstances, a 64 bit system might work a little better. Or, it might not.

If you are going post this kind of stuff, please use code tags - it doesn't cure everything, but at least it doesn't make matters worse:


BTW, those 7 zombies, what are they doing for you (actually, I know the answer to that - nothing. But, why are they there?).

As I see it, you have 322 MB free.