[CentOS] High system load but low cpu usage

[Thomas Harold]

On 6/9/2011 1:02 PM, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
> On 6/9/11, Steven Tardy<sjt5 at its.msstate.edu>  wrote:
>> top Cpu(s) line is averaged for all cpus/cores. to display individual
>> cpus/cores press:
>>      1
>> you'll likely see one cpu/core being pegged with iowait.
>> to identify the offending process within top press:
>>      fj<enter>
>> to display the P column(last used CPU).
>> watch top for a few minutes to see what is using all of the disk io.
>
> Thanks for these tips, it really helped narrow down the issue. Became
> quite clear that cpu 0 was taking up most of the user and sys time,
> somewhere in the 10x compared to the other 3.
>

Also consider installing "atop", which I find to be a bit more 
self-explanatory then regular "top".