[ale] Load...

[David Corbin]

I have system were top is giving this...

top - 10:14:05 up 13 days, 14:01,  1 user,  load average: 3.00, 3.00, 3.00
Tasks:  56 total,   1 running,  55 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):   0.3% user,   0.0% system,   0.0% nice,  99.7% idle

Notice how the load average is exactly 3.00 for all 1, 5 and 15 minutes.  Yet, 
the system is substantially idle.  This is pretty odd to begin with, but 
given the number of automated process on this system, the eveness is quite 
disturbing.  

The system does seem to be a bit slugish when used interactively.
"ps ax" yields nothing that looks suspicious to me, but I'm not sure that's 
worth much.

Ideas?

David