Determining load on a UNIX machine

[Larry Taborek]

> Can anyone recommend a generic equation that can be used to 
> instantaneously determine how busy (i.e. _percent_ busy) a UNIX 
> machine is?

Larry,

On Syst V systems this sort of data can be gotten from 'sar'.  On
BSD sytstems you will have to deal with the more cryptic iostat,
vmstat and so on.

You not only want to look at CPU percent busy, but the amount of
swap you are using, (Once you hit swap, performance dives), and
also the business of your io ports and file system disks.

Hope this helps...