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Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 10:41:51 -0400
From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>
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To: Paul Hamilton <paul@computerwest.com.au>
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Subject: Re: 'top' showing high interrupt rate
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Paul Hamilton wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I noticed that top shows a rather high interrupt rate, usually hovering
> around 60%!  Here is a sample:-
> 
> last pid:  2879;  load averages:  0.34,  0.24,  0.18
> up 1+17:26:56  17:18:10
> 36 processes:  2 running, 33 sleeping, 1 zombie
> CPU states:  0.6% user,  0.0% nice,  0.0% system, 59.8% interrupt, 39.6%
> idle
> Mem: 11M Active, 5072K Inact, 7988K Wired, 3552K Cache, 6480K Buf, 960K Free
> Swap: 128M Total, 4608K Used, 123M Free, 3% Inuse

<snip>

> Anyone have any idea how to troubleshoot further?  How can I isolate what is
> causing the rather high interrupt rate?

Run systat and then type ":vmstat" (without quotes) to get the vmstat screen.

The lower right will have interrupts broken down by device ... this should help.

-- 
Bill Moran
I'm looking for work:
http://www.potentialtech.com/resume-wpm.pdf