We seemingly always struggle with our load average. It usually hovers around 5-6 though it's quite high at the moment. Following is what the top part of 'top' shows. Notice only 2 processes are running. Is this extremely weird? If anyone has ideas on how we can improve performance of this machine, I'd appreciate any help! Please let me know if you need any additional info. Thank you!

Jeff

10:44am up 17:58, 8 users, load average: 8.93, 9.50, 9.07
129 processes: 117 sleeping, 2 running, 9 zombie, 1 stopped
CPU0 states: 46.4% user, 16.0% system, 13.2% nice, 37.2% idle
CPU1 states: 44.1% user, 2.2% system, 0.3% nice, 52.3% idle
CPU2 states: 63.3% user, 8.2% system, 0.1% nice, 27.3% idle
CPU3 states: 11.4% user, 9.2% system, 0.0% nice, 78.3% idle
Mem: 3834048K av, 3723992K used, 110056K free, 0K shrd, 17644K buff
Swap: 5242792K av, 321772K used, 4921020K free 2037096K cached


Following is the full 'top':
9:25pm up 1 day, 4:38, 7 users, load average: 8.77, 8.51, 8.51
138 processes: 120 sleeping, 2 running, 8 zombie, 8 stopped
CPU0 states: 35.1% user, 11.2% system, 0.0% nice, 53.0% idle
CPU1 states: 5.3% user, 7.3% system, 0.0% nice, 86.3% idle
CPU2 states: 64.3% user, 4.4% system, 0.0% nice, 30.2% idle
CPU3 states: 7.3% user, 6.3% system, 0.0% nice, 85.3% idle
Mem: 3834048K av, 3575508K used, 258540K free, 0K shrd, 20584K buff
Swap: 5242792K av, 1277080K used, 3965712K free 1811464K cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
8595 ddadmin 19 0 107M 13M 4152 R 98.6 0.3 92:22 run.process_job
7827 postgres 11 0 733M 732M 200M D 21.1 19.5 31:30 postmaster
8833 ddadmin 9 0 512 512 380 S 5.0 0.0 0:29 unzip
3925 postgres 9 0 209M 208M 207M D 4.9 5.5 68:33 postmaster
4151 postgres 9 0 201M 201M 199M D 3.9 5.3 27:50 postmaster
4137 postgres 9 0 201M 201M 200M D 2.1 5.3 30:18 postmaster
8879 root 14 0 1108 1108 860 R 2.1 0.0 0:00 top
4188 postgres 9 0 201M 201M 199M D 1.5 5.3 31:05 postmaster
4145 postgres 9 0 201M 201M 199M D 1.1 5.3 31:04 postmaster
139 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.1 0.0 11:03 kjournald
1 root 9 0 476 452 436 S 0.0 0.0 0:02 init
2 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 keventd
3 root 19 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU0
4 root 18 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU1
5 root 19 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU2
6 root 18 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU3
7 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 16:39 kswapd
8 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:59 bdflush
9 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 1:33 kupdated
10 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 ahc_dv_0
11 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 ahc_dv_1
12 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 scsi_eh_0
13 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 scsi_eh_1
14 root -1 -20 0 0 0 SW< 0.0 0.0 0:00 mdrecoveryd
19 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:15 kjournald
138 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kjournald
140 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 3:14 kjournald
464 root 9 0 544 508 468 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 syslogd
468 root 9 0 428 380 380 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 klogd
485 rpc 9 0 500 436 436 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 portmap
504 rpcuser 9 0 636 540 540 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 rpc.statd
648 root 8 0 776 540 540 S 0.0 0.0 0:05 sshd
662 root 9 0 728 620 620 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 xinetd
700 ntp 9 0 1980 1980 1792 S 0.0 0.0 0:04 ntpd
715 lp 8 0 516 368 368 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 lpd
734 root 9 0 1272 804 688 S 0.0 0.0 0:03 sendmail
744 smmsp 8 0 1048 640 552 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 sendmail

If you can, post the entire top.

What is the "run.process_job" that is taking using so much cpu? And your postges is taking up the rest? How many people are accessing this server?
You might want to look into "nice" or man nice or man renice.

http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/os/linux.../general/1064/
http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl1_nice.htm
http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr...=Google+Search