[CentOS] Tracking down whats causing a high load?

Wed Jun 21 10:17:29 UTC 2006
Ian mu <mu.llamas at gmail.com>

Hiya,

Currently running Centos 4.2 x86_64 dist on a dual 3G xeon, 2G ram,
scsi setupand everythings been running fine on it for some time. Then at 4am
last night something kicked in (have mrtg running monitoring when) and since
then its been running a load of about 1.5 (normally around 0.4). CPU usage
is Cpu(s):  1.1% us,  0.6% sy,  0.0% ni, 97.9% id,  0.2% wa,  0.1% hi,  0.1%si.

Can't see any new processes that would cause the load, just wondering is
there any way to try and track down whats actually causing this? It's not
excessive load, but want to add some new services and wary now, its
something that seems wrong given the sudden increase at 4am (think thats
when some o.s housekeeping tasks are normally scheduled, but there's none
running that I can see that started today).

Just hoping someone may have some tips on checking whats always waiting or
how to isolate whats happening. As said, ps -ef shows no new processes, and
cpu usage is very low.

Tia, Ian
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