Arch Linux

mewrei

Member

Registered: 2011-04-20

Posts: 3

Extreme Load Average Spikes

Basically what's happening is my machine will have these massive load average spikes (up to 5-6 on a 2 CPU machine) and I'm attempting to trace down what the source of the problem is.  The odd part is this issue is exhibited on multiple distributions and even on Windows.  So I'm figuring its a hardware fault of some type.

I'm running sar right now but its not caught one of these spikes yet, but here's the output

09:15:03 PM     CPU     %user     %nice   %system   %iowait    %steal     %idle
09:25:03 PM     all      1.52      0.01      1.06      6.66      0.00     90.75
09:35:03 PM     all      2.56      0.02      1.32     19.01      0.00     77.09
09:45:03 PM     all      1.91      0.04      1.24      5.96      0.00     90.85
09:55:03 PM     all      1.29      0.04      0.90      2.87      0.00     94.89
Average:        all      1.82      0.03      1.13      8.63      0.00     88.40

09:15:03 PM  pgpgin/s pgpgout/s   fault/s  majflt/s  pgfree/s pgscank/s pgscand/s pgsteal/s    %vmeff
09:25:03 PM      7.99    151.18    712.96      0.06   1196.83      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
09:35:03 PM      4.73    152.67    905.11      0.01   1308.89      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
09:45:03 PM     16.69    150.01    956.11      0.18   1293.88      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
09:55:03 PM     12.43    126.27    690.25      0.04   1105.45      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00
Average:        10.46    145.03    816.11      0.08   1226.26      0.00      0.00      0.00      0.00

Nothing seems to be a problem there.  Anyone have any advice on how to track this problem down?

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: Extreme Load Average Spikes

I wonder if it is I/O based? Install the "iotop" package and see if it is telling you anything.

---

Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

mewrei

Member

Registered: 2011-04-20

Posts: 3

Re: Extreme Load Average Spikes

Hey lagagnon,

That was actually my first thought, so I've been monitoring IO whenever these events happen but the load seems to be relatively low (still in the KB/s) whenever these spikes happen

kgas

Member

From: Qatar

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 718

Re: Extreme Load Average Spikes

with i5 laptop this issue was there with kernel 2.6.37. After upgrading to kernel 2.6.38 it is gone.

mewrei

Member

Registered: 2011-04-20

Posts: 3

Re: Extreme Load Average Spikes

Do you know of a good way to test this out and see if there are any major I/O blocks?

And kgas, this issue has been going on longer than 2.6.37