[CentOS] Help in troubleshoot cause of high kernel activity

Sun Mar 30 18:29:20 UTC 2008
Noob Centos Admin <centos.admin at gmail.com>

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote:

> Well .. top says you have 4 processes running ... if that is consistent
> (4 processes always in a run state) then you should be able to determine
> the running processes with the command:
>
> ps -ef r
>
> (I think)
>
> I would think one of always running processes is the one that is taking
> up CPU time.
>
> Also while in top, <Shift>-H might show some hidden threads in the output.
>

Thanks for the advise although I never got a chance to use it.

For some inexplicable Murphy-like reason, the server load went back to
normal levels shortly after I sent off the email to the list.

The only possible explanation I could think of was that I killed the
setroubleshootd process because it froze up after I tried to fiddle with the
SELinux settings. There was some error in the log about unable to connect to
the audit socket.

After observing the back to normal loads for a few hours to confirm it
wasn't a momentarily drop, I restarted the setroubleshootd process and yet
the load remain normal.

So my current uneducated guess is that the barrage of undeliverable email
messages on the very first day caused SELinux to choke on a system/kernel
level until the reporting daemon was killed to whatever was getting tied up
to move on?
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