[ale] Load...

[Michael Hirsch]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
James
> P. Kinney III
> Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2005 11:56 AM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [ale] Load...
> 
> On Sun, 2005-01-23 at 10:18 -0500, David Corbin wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> 1. A process is "stuck". Some bug has it in a loop that keeps hitting
> the bo with out doing anything. My usual suspects are the "bug-free"
> releases of java, the jvm, and any browser.

I had this once when a HD failed, but the kernel didn't notice.
Everything that tried to read a particular partition would hang in
kernel space.  Every time updatedb ran, another process would get stuck
and the load average would increase by one.  No one noticed this until
the LA got so high that sendmail refused to route anything.  Then people
noticed there was some problem.

Michael