High Load problem

[fmanders]

Hi,
i got 2 servers , both running Fedora Core 2.
both servers have the problem that they are showing high loads while the cpu is in 75% idle

One server is a single 3.0ghz with 1024mb and 2x160GB SATA
Other server is a dual xeon 2.4ghz with 2048mb and 2x160GB SATA

uname -a on the xeon shows :
Linux xxxx.xxxx.xx 2.6.10-1.9_FC2smp #1 SMP Thu Jan 13 18:15:45 EST 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

i know more ppl with fedora that have the same problem ,
can anyone here help us ?

[xaphan]

Here are some tool that can help you:

vmstat
iostat
mpstat

---
Pascal Gauthier

[tirespeed]

You didn't say what services you are provided with these machines. I've experienced high load issues with some of our dual-xeon MySQL servers. Just re-compiling a vanilla 2.6 kernel took care of it. I haven't had time to track down which patch to the kernel tree is causing the problem. Interestingly enough, dropping in a FC1 2.4 kernel fixes the problem as well.

My definition of high-load is when uptime shows 2.xx-4.xx instead of 0.4x on the same hardware that was upgraded from FC1 to FC2. The machine was sluggish and the load jumped around quite a bit as well. Previously, was the machine on FC1 I saw (via MRTG) that the load stayed in the same range all of the time. With FC2, you would see very spiky graphs, and a very noticable increase in query times.

I did track memory usage, disk I/O and could not find anything different from the other 10 db servers next to it running FC1.

[Void Main]

Could you give your definition of "high load"?

[tk]

is your machine performing any disk intensive operations? 'find /' is a classic example of a process generating a lot of disk-IO and high load while your CPU is idle (or even forced to be idle / waiting)

[james_in_denver]

High loads while CPU is not being 100% utilized indicates I/O bottleneck/problem.