[CentOS] Kernel 2.6.32-573.22.1.el6.x86_64, higher than usual load

Fri Apr 8 18:17:18 UTC 2016
Akemi Yagi <amyagi at gmail.com>

On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 6:32 AM, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote:

> On 04/08/2016 06:50 AM, Johnny Carlsen wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > After switching to the 2.6.32-573.22.1.el6.x86_64 kernel (CentOS 6) a
> few weeks ago I have noticed that my servers are now reporting a much
> higher idle load.
> >
> > The servers are being monitored with Zabbix, and there is a clear
> difference between the older kernel 2.6.32-573.12.1 and the newer
> 2.6.32-573.12.1.
> >
> > I can see the problem on both physical and virtual servers.
> >
> > You can see the Load Average chart here from one of our servers:
> > http://imgur.com/U1eihMX
> >
> > The server is pretty much idle all the time, but the load average
> increased from 0.001 to 0.300 when updated to the new kernel.
> >
> > Is anyone else seeing the same behavior?
>
> This is one of the fixes listed on the errata page:
>
> "Due to prematurely decremented calc_load_task, the calculated load
> (snip)"
>
> From:
> https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-0494.html
>
> No idea if that is impacting the load shown on your machine .. maybe
> someone has some ideas.
>

An RHEL user is reporting what seems to be the same issue:

https://access.redhat.com/discussions/2247501

Akemi