CompTIA Linux+ XK0-006 (V8) Practice Question

The correct answer accurately describes what the Linux load average represents. The load average is a measure of the number of processes that are currently in a runnable state (waiting for CPU time) or in an uninterruptible sleep state (typically waiting for an I/O operation to complete). The three numbers represent the average load over the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes. A general rule is that a load average equal to the number of CPU cores indicates the system is fully utilized. A load average significantly higher than the number of cores, as seen in this scenario (15.75 on a 4-core system), signifies that the system is overloaded and has a sustained backlog of tasks.

• CPU utilization is not the same as load average. A system can have a high load average with low CPU usage if many processes are stuck waiting for slow I/O (like a failing disk or slow network storage). Therefore, you cannot assume CPU is at 100% just from the load average.
• Memory exhaustion can cause a high load average (due to swapping, which is heavy I/O), but a high load average does not automatically mean the system is out of memory. The primary cause could be a CPU-bound process or non-memory-related I/O wait.
• Network bottlenecks are a possible cause of I/O wait, which increases the load average, but they are not the only cause. The issue could be local disk I/O, for instance. The chosen answer is the most encompassing and direct interpretation of the provided metric.