loadcloak is a UNIX utility to run shell commands without affecting the
load average.
$ make
$ ./loadcloak '<shell command to run>'loadcloak first determines when the load average is recalculated. Then
it launches the provided shell command in a new process group. It sends
SIGSTOP to this process group before load-average recalculations, and
sends SIGCONT afterward. Thus, the processes in that group are not
in the run queue when the load average is computed, so their activity
does not affect the load average.
A more complete description, with caveats, is provided at the beginning of the source code.
This software has no practical purpose. Even if it "cloaks" process activity from appearing in the load average, it cannot prevent it from appearing in CPU usage statistics.
Really, it's just a demonstration that UNIX load averages can be manipulated. Isn't it amusing to see near-100% CPU usage with a near-zero load average?
loadcloak is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file
for details.