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Load average

As explained in Build and Orchestrator in Go (From Scratch)

A load average is a measure of the average amount of work waiting for or using CPU resources over a time interval.

Load average measures the average amount of work waiting for or using CPU resources over a time interval. On Linux, /proc/loadavg exposes it as a directly readable system metric, alongside process information. section 6.2 section 6.3

Treat /proc/loadavg as the raw interface and uptime as a convenient presentation layer. A Go metrics collector can retain the parsed value in Stats.LoadStats while gathering memory, disk, and CPU statistics. section 6.2

Inspecting the metric

Running `cat /proc/loadavg` can produce `0.14 0.16 0.18 1/1787 176550`; `uptime` presents the load-average values in a labeled status line, such as `load average: 0.43, 0.32, 0.33`.

How Build and Orchestrator in Go (From Scratch) covers it

How deep it goes
Defines the metric and shows its Linux interfaces, but stops short of explaining its calculation or interpreting threshold values.
Examples
Demonstrates cat /proc/loadavg, uptime output, and the Go Stats structure that stores collected load statistics.
What it assumes
Assumes Linux and basic shell familiarity, while showing /proc as an ordinary filesystem readable with standard commands.
What you can do after
Evaluate system load by reading /proc/loadavg or uptime and include it in a Go-based worker statistics collector.
How it connects
Connects load average with the /proc filesystem, uptime, CPU usage, and worker-machine metrics.
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This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Build and Orchestrator in Go (From Scratch). The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.