average load does not get lower than one

Question

I have a strange situation when with seeming low cpu load average load is always higher or equal than one

output from htop:

1  [||||                                                                            2.6%]     Tasks: 76, 542 thr; 1 running
2  [                                                                                0.0%]     Load average: 1.02 1.12 1.24
3  [                                                                                0.0%]     Uptime: 100 days, 05:59:35
4  [|                                                                               0.7%]

and version:

cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.32-220.23.1.el6.x86_64 ([e-mail]) (gcc version 4.4.6 20110731 (Red Hat 4.4.6-3) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Mon Jun 18 18:58:52 BST 2012

This happens not only in htop, top shows same average load. What could be wrong or it is just a configuration quirk?

Answer 1

Load average doesn't show exactly how much the applications are using the CPU.

The CPU can wait for the disk, it could spend time performing kernel related tasks, or can be severely interrupted by an action such as a key press or it could have some time stolen by the hypervisor on a VM.

Perhaps atop would be a better tool than htop to monitor your system.