Load average stuck at 7.00, CPU usage ~ 0.1%, what gives?

BrianK · 02-16-2004, 04:56 PM

I can't really reboot this machine (well, I can, but I'd prefer not to). The machine's load average is 7.00. It's been at 7.00 (or 700, depending on how you want to look at it) for some time now, but it's not doing anything. If I top it, I get:

Code:

  2:50pm  up 9 days, 16:23,  4 users,  load average: 7.00, 7.00, 7.00
94 processes: 93 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU0 states:  0.0% user,  0.0% system,  0.0% nice, 100.0% idle
CPU1 states:  0.0% user,  0.0% system,  0.0% nice, 100.0% idle
Mem:  1030672K av,  454468K used,  576204K free,       0K shrd,  117376K buff
Swap: 2040244K av,    1012K used, 2039232K free                  142884K cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
    1 root       9   0   480  448   416 S     0.0  0.0   0:08 init
    2 root       8   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 keventd
    3 root      18  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU0
    4 root      19  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:02 ksoftirqd_CPU1
    5 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:02 kswapd
...

any ideas on why it's this way or how to fix it?

edit: Oh yeah, this machine is running RH 7.3 with the 2.4.20-24.7smp kernel.

Joey.Dale · 02-16-2004, 05:01 PM

There really does not look like there is a problem. More info might help, like what distro, kernel, and services are you using?

-Joey

wapcaplet · 02-16-2004, 05:21 PM

Doesn't look like a problem to me. High load average doesn't really mean all that much - it just means there are more processes waiting for something like disk I/O.

Tinkster · 02-16-2004, 05:38 PM

But that still may mean that some process that's
supposed to write file(s) to disk is not doing anything
anymore... e.g., a nfds or smbd has given up ... some
I/O isn't working.

I think that a permanent load > 2 demands ones
attention ;)

Cheers,
Tink

BrianK · 02-16-2004, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tinkster
I think that a permanent load > 2 demands ones
attention

I agree. The machine has now been sitting here doing almost nothing, and still the load stays at 7.00 (it has never gone above 2.00 - or 200 - before this).

nfsd is running on it - 8 threads.
no samba
distribution: RH 7.3
2.4.20-24.7smp kernel
P4 2.8 on an MSI Neo2 mobo w/ 1GB Corsair DDR
no special graphics anything - it's just a node on a render farm.
I can write/read to disk.

any ideas? any more info you'd like me to provide? It doesn't "feel" sluggish - anything I do on the box executes as if it has no load (which I suspect to be the case).