check_load plugin details

Nagios Nagios Plugins support
1

Hello,
Can anyone tell me what the check_load plugin actually checks?

We have a Current Load service check running on our servers and last night all of them went into a warning state. All of the load values returned ranged from 3.09 - 3.92. They recovered shortly after. But we are trying to figure out what might have caused this.

The description from GroundWork/Nagios reference says “This plugin tests the current system load average”. System load of…? What is being measured here?

Thanks

2

We are running Nagios as a VMware appliance and I did find out at the same time the prelink log was updated. Here’s what prelink.log said:
Prelinking /usr/lib/vmware-tools/configurator/XFree86-3/XF86_VMware
/usr/sbin/prelink: /usr/lib/vmware-tools/configurator/XFree86-3/XF86_VMware: Not enough room to add .dynamic entry

I’m guessing this had something to do with Nagios sending notify’s for all our systems w/ Current Load but not sure.