From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 31 01:35:09 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD12C37B401 for ; Thu, 31 Jul 2003 01:35:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rambo.401.cx (rambo.401.cx [80.65.205.166]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D24743F3F for ; Thu, 31 Jul 2003 01:33:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from listsub@401.cx) Received: from 401.cx (132.dairy.twenty4help.se [80.65.195.132]) by rambo.401.cx (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h6V8Xe7P000497; Thu, 31 Jul 2003 10:33:40 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from listsub@401.cx) Message-ID: <3F28D45E.4030109@401.cx> Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 10:33:34 +0200 From: "Roger 'Rocky' Vetterberg" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030708 Thunderbird/0.1a X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jamie References: <20030728165345.A71147-100000@floyd.gnulife.org> In-Reply-To: <20030728165345.A71147-100000@floyd.gnulife.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Server spinning out of control... X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 08:35:10 -0000 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