> Where do I get iostat / iotop? > > > Starting sendmail back up puts me in the high 1's to low 2's > My next course of action would be to start sendmail in debug level 0.1 and check some logs. Find out exactly sendmail is trying to do, maybe lsof to see if it is getting stuck on something. I am pretty certain (from the information provided) that its IO that is bringing your system to its knees. iotop is available on pbone.net and as for iostat # yum install sysstat. But I think you really you have found your problem child.