High CPU usage when starting services on FC11

[bendib]

Ok, so my server is doing fine, but there is one odd thing I would like to fix. When I start and stop services, the CPU is maxed out for about five seconds each time. The services start the same speed, but it still does this. Small things like lm_sensors don't do this, just things like httpd and sendmail. THis server was upgraded to Fedora 11 with a netinstall CD a few months ago.

[jpollard]

Starting httpd starts a number of processes - there is the master daemon,
plus all of the active service daemons. Each service daemon must allocate
private memory, and that adds to the time the daemons start. You only
wait for the master daemon to start. Once it starts, it will start the service
daemons.

Sendmail is similar. When sendmail starts, it will start two daemons - one
for outside connections, one for internal delivery. The internal delivery must
scan several directories to identify any messages that are "in transit". The
CPU time will depend on how many messages there are. Any queued messages
for remote delivery will also be sent - and this can have one daemon per message.

Normally, the message queues are empty, so the only CPU time used will be
that for the initial startup, and first scan.

In both cases, the CPU time will be divided between disk activity and memory
allocations. Even though it lasts about 5 seconds (which is a bit long from my
point of view - I think it really is only about 2 seconds of actual CPU, the rest
is I/O scheduling and wait time) the actual time will depend on the amount of
available memory, and the processor(s) available for execution.

[bendib]

My other machines do not do this. It's not just the services I mentioned above. Oh, and I'm not a noob, just so you know. I know, these forums are filled with them. :-)

[jpollard]

Do they have anything to do with these services?

How many concurrent threads are configured - 1, 10, 50?

I've not noticed an issue on F11 here, but then my system
is a dual quad x86-64 with 8 GB of memory. My laptop
on the other hand, is always slow (750MHz PIII)

[bendib]

Well, here is something that might have something to do with it I probably should have mentioned: I cp -a-ed my Fedora 11 install to a non-failing drive and then just edited /etc/fstab. All works fine, but I noticed a couple other apps not having to do with services do the same thing. It's not too big of a deal. This install has had the living crap used out of it, so it's not too surprising.