On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 11:00 AM, listmail <listmail at entertech.com> wrote: > On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:20:53 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote >> On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 4:52 PM, listmail <listmail at entertech.com> wrote: > <snip >> > OK, I downloaded the CentOS 5.2 Live CD and booted from it. To eliminate >> > load from the GUI, I forced the system into runlevel 3 and ran top. >> > I see the same problem; the load average sits at about 0.40 continuously. >> > This is with the ethernet drivers running, and it does not matter if the >> > network cables are plugged in or not. >> > >> >> Ok sorry for the wild goose chase earlier... >> >> 1. Check with the manufacturer or motherboard to see if this is a >> known issue. Sometimes these items show up and are fixed with a BIOS >> update. >> 2. Check to see if you can pinpoint where the problem is coming >> from... set up sar and iostat to see if there are excessive irq's on >> one line or another. Run the system as a minimal OS when doing >> this... nothing but init 1 if possible. >> 3. Try Fedora 9 livecd and see if it still occurs. If it doesn't >> then the problem was fixed in the main kernel between EL-5 and now. That >> can help make it easier to track down for a bug in Red Hat's bugzilla. >> > I cannot find relevant support notes on either the Supermicro or Intel sites, > but I'll send an email to Supermicro support to see if they know anything. > > I used vmstat to compare interrupt and context switch rates on a system > with the issue and a system without the issue (older kernel). Both systems > show an irq rate of about 1000/sec and cs rate of about 25/sec. > > The system that does not exhibit the problem is running 2.6.18-53.1.14.el5, > so it seems to be something that has changed since that time frame > (early CentOS 5.1, I think). > Does the non-affected system show the problem when you run livecd on it? If not, i would try installing that kernel on your affected system and see if the problem goes away for the time being. -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"