Diagnosing load problems with top

• us: user cpu time: the percentage of cpu time spent running users’ processes that aren’t niced

• sy : system cpu time: the percentage of cpu time running the kernel and kernel processes

• ni : nice cpu time: the percentage of cpu time spent running processes that have been niced.

• id: cpu idle time: the percentage of cpu time that is spent idle. if this number is high then you know the cpu-load isn’t the issue

• wa: I/O wait: the percentage of cpu time that is spent waiting for I/O. if this value is low you can usually rule out disk or network I/O.

• hi: hardware interrupts: percentage of cpu time servicing hardware interrupts

• si: software interrupts: percentage of cpu time servicing software interrupts

• st: steal time: if you are running vms, this will tell you the percentage of cpu time that is stolen from you for other tasks.