Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:59:34 +0100 From: "Zbigniew Szalbot" <zszalbot@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: sudden peak in load average Message-ID: <94136a2c0802270259i313331dcw45f8c26801f01636@mail.gmail.com>
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Hello, >From the MRTG data I can see that suddenly on a currently not very busy machine the load averege went over 15 or more. This happened around 10 in the morning. Not many entries in httpd access log, smtp server was not too much loaded (at that time it generally produces a load average of about 1). But this time: 2008-02-27 10:03:36 1JUICO-0002Bs-23 no immediate delivery: load average 15.88 Where can I look for more information about what happened. The server was rebooted early in the morning so its swap consumption was almost non-existent. Around 10 it suddenly consumed probably around 200MB of swap, now it stands at 135MB which is pretty normal with this machine (it only has 512 RAM). SWAP usage is normal with this machine but it usually is a matter of 2-3 days before it gradually takes over 10-13% of swap space. I tried by looking at: http access log auth.log maillog messages Nothing in there indicating an outburst of sudden activities. heh - I now think I may be wrong. The load average did not necessarily produce so much swap consumption so fast. At 10:13 I run a cron job optimising all mysql tables. So maybe in fact the swap was used by mysql operations, although I am still interested to now what casued load average to go above 15 at 10:03. 10:00AM up 3:14, 0 users, load averages: 0.40, 0.13, 0.05 10:01AM up 3:15, 0 users, load averages: 0.23, 0.14, 0.05 10:02AM up 3:16, 0 users, load averages: 0.08, 0.11, 0.05 10:03AM up 3:17, 0 users, load averages: 11.54, 3.09, 1.15 10:04AM up 3:18, 0 users, load averages: 13.26, 5.69, 2.28 10:05AM up 3:19, 0 users, load averages: 4.98, 4.69, 2.14 10:06AM up 3:20, 0 users, load averages: 1.79, 3.80, 1.99 Thanks for any pointers. -- Zbigniew Szalbot
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