From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 20:44:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 20:44:59 -0400 Received: from fastmail.fm ([209.61.183.86]:11948 "EHLO www.fastmail.fm") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sat, 12 Oct 2002 20:44:58 -0400 X-Mail-from: robm@fastmail.fm X-Spam-score: -0.1 X-Epoch: 1034470239 X-Sasl-enc: tusc/LGjwZJtEspmNlFp0g Message-ID: <10b901c27252$60199810$1900a8c0@lifebook> From: "Rob Mueller" To: "Mark Hahn" Cc: , "Jeremy Howard" References: Subject: Re: Strange load spikes on 2.4.19 kernel Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 10:49:18 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > but that load of 21 is really just an artifact of a bunch > of procs being in short-term io wait (D state in top/ps), right? > such procs get counted in loadaverage, even though they're asleep, > not eating cycles. Well I tried running this: while true; do uptime; ps -wax | grep -v ' S' | grep -v 'ps -wax'; sleep 5; done Which should show all procs not in the sleep state (except the ps process itself) every 5 seconds, along with an uptime load. See output below, which again has a load jump about half way down. It appears no extra processes are in the 'D' state. And no extra CPU load appears either during the spike. 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:06, 2 users, load average: 0.29, 0.67, 2.11 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 0.27, 0.66, 2.10 19784 ? R 0:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 0.24, 0.65, 2.09 19808 ? R 0:00 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 0.22, 0.64, 2.08 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 0.21, 0.63, 2.07 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 27.65, 6.46, 3.95 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 25.44, 6.35, 3.93 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 23.40, 6.25, 3.90 19668 ? R 0:00 imapd 19669 ? R 0:00 imapd 19742 ? D 0:00 imapd 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 21.53, 6.14, 3.88 19784 ? R 0:01 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 19.80, 6.04, 3.86 7:45pm up 1 day, 18:07, 2 users, load average: 18.22, 5.94, 3.84 I did notice a very small load jump earlier caused by what you describe above, which seems to be due to the journal being flushed, but notice how small this jump is in comparison to the one above... 7:38pm up 1 day, 18:00, 2 users, load average: 0.63, 1.47, 2.97 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:00, 2 users, load average: 0.58, 1.45, 2.96 18564 ? D 0:00 imapd 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:00, 2 users, load average: 0.53, 1.42, 2.94 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 0.49, 1.40, 2.93 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 0.53, 1.39, 2.92 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 0.76, 1.41, 2.91 1441 ? D 1:23 qmgr -l -t fifo -u 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 1.26, 1.50, 2.93 10 ? DW 17:08 [kjournald] 1577 ? D 0:00 imapd 16346 ? D 0:00 lmtpd -a 16393 ? D 0:00 imapd 16427 ? D 0:00 lmtpd -a 17349 ? D 0:00 imapd 17481 ? D 0:00 lmtpd -a 18356 ? D 0:00 imapd 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 1.16, 1.48, 2.91 465 ? R 5:57 syslogd -m 0 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 1.07, 1.45, 2.89 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 0.98, 1.43, 2.88 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 0.98, 1.42, 2.87 7:39pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 0.90, 1.40, 2.85 7:40pm up 1 day, 18:01, 2 users, load average: 0.99, 1.41, 2.85 1 Now I'm more confused than ever, because there don't actually appear to be any blocked processes at all? What is going on??? Rob Mueller