I've been playing with monit[1] to monitor a server which has been having some problems (specifically a service would stop responding to TCP requests, so although it was still "running" it was no longer any use; monit is able to make connections periodically and check whether or not the they're being accepted and giving the expected response).
It comes with an example configuration for monitoring the system (memory/swap/cpu usage, and load averages). I have it monitoring load averages based on the configuration but I'm getting a lot of alarm reports every day and I need to tweak the config. The existing config is fairly self explanatory: if loadavg (1min) > 4 for 2 cycles then alert if loadavg (5min) > 2 for 2 cycles then alert
On other words, if the 1 or 5 min load averages exceed the level shown for two or more consecutive tests (which take place every 2 mins) I'll get an alert.
My question is: what would be sensible load averages to set the thresholds at, or are they essentially meaningless and I should ditch them? The server has a AMD Athlon(tm) II Neo N36L Dual-Core Processor so as I understand it a load average of anything up to 2 means the CPU is under-utilised anyway?