Hi,
> Try blocking the IPs on the router and see if that helps.
Unfortunately the server's in a DC so the router is not under our control.
> You can also run iostat and look at the disk usage which also
> generates load.
I did try iostat and its iowait% did coincide with top's report, which
is basically in the low 1~2%.
However, iostat reports much lower %user and $system compared to top
running at the same time so I'm not quite sure if I can rely on its
figures.
> How many cores does your machine have? Load avg is calculated for a
> single core, so a quad core would reach 100% utilization at a load of
> 4, but high iowaits can generate an artificially high load avg as well
> (and why one sees greater than 100% utilization).
It's a dual core that's why I was getting concerned since loads above
2.0 would imply the system's processing capacity was apparently maxed.
However, load and percentages don't add up.
For example, now I'm seeing
top - 14:04:30 up 171 days, 7:14, 1 user, load average: 3.33, 3.97, 3.81
Tasks: 246 total, 2 running, 236 sleeping, 0 stopped, 8 zombie
Cpu(s): 13.3%us, 16.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 67.5%id, 3.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
iostat
Linux 2.6.18-128.1.16.el5xen 12/30/2009
avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
3.28 0.20 1.16 2.38 0.01 92.97
> I really wish load would be broken down as CPU/memory/disk instead of
> the ambiguous load avg, and show network read/write utilization in
> ifconfig.
Totally agreed. All the load number is doing is telling me something
is using up resources somewhere but not a single clue otherwise!
Confusing, frustrating and worrying at the same time :(