From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 28 14:44:33 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 9F19D37B401 for ; Mon, 28 Jul 2003 14:44:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from floyd.gnulife.org (floyd.gnulife.org [199.86.41.27]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C6B1A43F85 for ; Mon, 28 Jul 2003 14:44:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jamie@gnulife.org) Received: by floyd.gnulife.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 4010A43317; Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:48:52 -0500 (CDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by floyd.gnulife.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3187543316 for ; Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:48:52 -0500 (CDT) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:48:52 -0500 (CDT) From: Jamie To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20030728163035.H71147-100000@floyd.gnulife.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: 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: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 21:44:33 -0000 We've got a server that occassionally becomes temporarily useless because the load average shoots up to around 150.0 or so, and then slowly winds down over a 2 minute period. I cannot seem to find the process which is putting so much load on the machine. I've tried running top with the q switch, as well as the "I" switch, and when top opens, I can't see anything consuming large amounts of CPU power or consuming much memory, but the load average will be incredibly high. There isn't anything unusual in /var/log/messages to indicate anything which might be causing the load average to go shooting through the ceiling. This happens for about a minute, and then the machine comes back slowly again after a period of about 2 minutes. Does anyone have any ideas how we can figure out what process/processes might be doing this? We're running FreeBSD 3.4, and it's running as a mailserver with Sendmail. We know that the machine needs to be reloaded with something newer, but this is a big production machine and we've got a lot of engineering to do before we can get it up, so yes, upgrading the OS will happen soon, but until then, we would really like to trace this problem. Thanks, - Jamie "A friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself."