[CentOS] Tracking down whats causing a high load?

Wed Jun 21 12:24:50 UTC 2006
Ian mu <mu.llamas at gmail.com>

Hiya, thanks for the replies, very useful and has given me some food for
thought on a few things.

Used rkhunter which is fine apart from one app out of date which I've now
updated, chkrootkit its clear but chkproc gives a couple of processes not in
readdir output, but they correspond to apps we are running when I check in
/proc/pid/cmdline so think that sides looking ok (still checking a couple of
bits though).


The strange one was on the vmstat 5 suggestion, the r (waiting for runtime)
column is pretty much 0, if the load is > 1 shouldn't that be mostly > 1
also, or am I misunderstanding the load definition?

I.e currently load is 1.98

procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system--
----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id
wa
 0  0    624  34652  66608 1059564    0    0     1     9    0     0  3  1
96  0
 0  0    624  34436  66608 1059564    0    0     0    39 1207  2534  1  1
97  0
 0  0    624  34268  66608 1059564    0    0     0    42 1202  2412  1  1
98  0
 0  0    624  34140  66608 1059564    0    0     0    33 1197  2427  1  1
98  0
 0  0    624  34140  66608 1059564    0    0     0     0 1196  2427  1  1
98  0
 0  0    624  34188  66608 1059632    0    0     0    37 1205  2545  2  1
97  0
 1  0    624  34196  66608 1059632    0    0     0     0 1197  2392  1  1
98  0
 0  0    624  34444  66608 1059632    0    0     0    33 1200  2430  1  1
98  0
 0  0    624  34260  66608 1059632    0    0     0     0 1198  2441  1  1
98  0
 0  0    624  34132  66608 1059632    0    0     0    37 1210  2592  1  1
97  0
 0  0    624  34204  66608 1059632    0    0     0    34 1207  2502  1  1
98  0
 0  0    624  34268  66608 1059632    0    0     0    33 1201  2433  1  1
98  0

Cheers, Ian

On 6/21/06, Chris Mauritz <chrism at imntv.com> wrote:
>
> Ian mu wrote:
> > 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.
> >
>
> Have you been up to date with patches?  Have you tried running rkhunter
> and chkrootkit to see if you've been burgled?  One of the first things a
> rootkit does is replace things like ps so it's processes become
> "invisible."
>
> Cheers,
>
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