high load, low i/o wait, sys idle about 98%

[Linda Webb]

I have a N2000 running 11.0, running apache, java, and tcl scripts. The load is high & climbing gradually. The %user is about .6% and %sys is about 1.5% i/o wait is low about 1, and %idle is about 98%. What are some other items I can check to diagnose what the problem can be?

[Patrick Wallek]

One thing I seem to recall hearing that could cause this is if the kernel parameter timeslice was changed to 1. Some of the kernel parameter templates can change this (wrongly change it!) if one is applied.

Check the timeslice parameter and if it is anything other than 10, change it back to 10.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Linda,

Also check your disk repsonse times with

sar -d 60 5

to see 60 iterations 5 seconds apart. You may be spotlighting a disk bottleneck.

Jeff

[Linda Webb]

Thanks, for the suggestions. I'm still not sure the issue, but I discovered it was related to the apache we are running off an nfs mount.

[Navin Bhat_2]

Hello Linda,

I dont see a problem here. A system with such low numbers and 98% idle sounds like a very healthy system. I would be concerned only if your load average starts climibing above 4 and keeps growing. Again just because you see a system with 100% utilization on cpu does not necessarily mean there is a problem. In your case you are just using 2% of cpu. I would not be concerned at all with the numbers you have posted here for usr/sys.

Thx - Navin

[Anil C. Sedha]

Please check if you have vhand process taking a lot of your CPU or some sysmon processes taking up resources. If yes, then probably you need some patching on your systems. Pls inform if you have the latest patch bundle installed (available through HP website).

Secondly, it would be helpful to diagnose the issue, if you can post the following outputs.


sar 1 20

top - screen output

glance - output


Then we can provide you more specific advice on increasing performance.

Regards,
Anil

[Steven E. Protter]

You may have some kind of script or proces that is replicating itself. A script calling itself. You'll see this in the ps -ef.

I suppose if apache is not so well patched, you might be the victim of some kind of exploit. Ignore this if you are not on the public Internet.

Nothing else to add.

SEP