--- On Sat, 7/19/08, listmail listmail@entertech.com wrote:
From: listmail listmail@entertech.com Subject: [CentOS] Load Average ~0.40 when idle To: "CentOS mailing list" centos@centos.org Date: Saturday, July 19, 2008, 1:48 PM I am running CentOS 5 on a dual-dual-core Intel machine, and I am seeing a load average of between 0.35 and 0.50 while the machine is idle, i.e. no processes appear to be running.
Both top and uptime report the same thing. Looking at top, I cannot see any processes that are using CPU time except for top and init, and they are not using enough cycles to push up the load average.
According to top, there are occasional tiny (like 0.5%) bumps in the system usage occasionally, and almost no user space usage. Again, not enough to account for the load average I am seeing.
I have tried a couple of kernel updates, and upgraded from CentOS 5.0 to 5.2, none of which make any difference.
Has anyone else seen this? And can anyone recommend a way to figure out what is causing the load average to be this high when the machine is idle?
I have not seen this with any C5. However I have moved all /etc/cron.daily/prelink /etc/cron.daily/makewhatis
to the weekly.
check /var/log/secure for dictionary attacks
check your /var/log/httpd/access_log for unusual PHP activity
check http://localhost/usage for the webalizer logs, where maybe something will standout.