Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 10:33:34 +0200 From: "Roger 'Rocky' Vetterberg" <listsub@401.cx> To: Jamie <jamie@gnulife.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Server spinning out of control... Message-ID: <3F28D45E.4030109@401.cx> In-Reply-To: <20030728165345.A71147-100000@floyd.gnulife.org> References: <20030728165345.A71147-100000@floyd.gnulife.org>
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Jamie wrote: > > That is a good idea, thanks. We did check that though. Went through > each user's accounts checking their .forwards and procmaillrc files. > > We are running spamassassin 2.55, and in the global procmailrc file we > call spamc which connects to a spamd running on another machine. > > Are you aware of any other system utilities that might be used to > trace CPU consumption and trap problems? We've taken a lot of stabs in the > dark with what it could be, and we'd like to try some solid diagnostic > utils to shed more light. > > - Jamie Try running systat -vm, that should give you a good overview over what happens when the load skyrockets. I had a similar problem once, not as extreme as the one you describe but the symptoms where the same. A few times a day one of our servers reported load averages at about 5.0-5.5. By the time I got there (30 second run to the serverroom) the server was always back to almost idle, avg around 0.2-0.5. The only thing that was different in this compared to most of the other servers was the nic. Since the onboard nic died we had to replace it with a low profile PCI nic. I cant remember the exact make and model, but it was probably something cheap from the nearest computer store. Using systat I noticed that during the bursts of high loads the number of interrupts on the nic went skyhigh. We replaced the nic with a more wellknown brand, and the server flatlined its load average. Its still doing exactly the same tasks but rarely goes above 0.1. -- R
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