[CentOS] Load Average ~0.40 when idle

Sat Jul 19 20:58:15 UTC 2008
Mark Pryor <tlviewer at yahoo.com>



--- On Sat, 7/19/08, listmail <listmail at entertech.com> wrote:

> From: listmail <listmail at entertech.com>
> Subject: [CentOS] Load Average ~0.40 when idle
> To: "CentOS mailing list" <centos at 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.

-- 
Mark