A while back I had some help here with a bash script to check the free ram due to an issue we had, if it hit a level, it would simply email me.

I am looking to do the same this time with the server load. We have a runaway process and I want to do the same thing. A 'w' shows;
load average: 1.49, 1.40, 1.33

and I wish to simply check the load (the 1 second) and if its > x, email me (might throw in more) but does anyone know how to get that varible? The memcheck simply looked like this;

if [ ${MEM_VAL} -gt 450 ]; then
echo MEM_VAL=$MEM_VAL > /tmp/tmpfile
mail -s "message here" my@emailhere < /home/user/memtemp
fi

So until I find this rouge problem, anyone who can help out on this, I greatly appreciate it.

Well with so many other things going on, I managed to get it working, so for the 40+ people who viewed and might care, this is what I have as a band-aid until things are found;

#!/bin/bash
loadavg=`uptime | awk '{print $10}'`
thisloadavg=`echo $loadavg|awk -F \. '{print $1}'`
if [ "$thisloadavg" -ge "10" ]; then
echo "Webserver 5 alert - Load Average $loadavg ($thisloadavg)> /tmp/loadtmp "
mail -s "Alert Sever 5 load GT 10, restarting CF and Apache" mycell@txt.att.net < /home/user/loadtmp
killall -9 httpd
/home/user/local/coldfusion/bin/coldfusion stop
sleep 30
/home/user/local/coldfusion/bin/coldfusion start
/home/user/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

else
echo "Okay - Load Average $loadavg ($thisloadavg) "
fi