High CPU system usage

[Ugo Bellavance]

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Denis Beauchemin wrote:
> Ugo Bellavance wrote:
> 
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>>     During a period of high load, a server shows a lot of system CPU time
>> in use.  We got a big backlog during this period.  Here is an excerpt of
>> the sar report for this period.  Any ideas welcome... this is kernel 2.4
>> from Whitebox linux 3.  Please ask if you need more details.
>>
>> 09:20:00 AM       all     77.69      0.00     15.58      1.03      5.70

>> 11:20:00 AM       all     69.71      0.00     21.51      3.57      5.21
>> 11:20:00 AM         0     69.45      0.00     21.55      3.62      5.39
>> 11:20:00 AM         1     69.98      0.00     21.47      3.52      5.03
>>
>> Average:          all     50.51      0.00     10.56      2.32     36.61
>> Average:            0     50.38      0.00     10.62      2.33     36.68
>> Average:            1     50.64      0.00     10.50      2.31     36.55
>>
>> Regards,
>>  
>>
> Ugo,
> 
> I'm guessing your output refers to:
> Time          CPU     %user     %nice   %system   %iowait     %idle

Yes, sorry for not including headers.

> 
> Those numbers are not uncommon here and the server copes well with
> incoming traffic...

Hmmm :(.

> 
> Is your server swapping? 

Hmmm, maybe, but I doubt:

              pgpgin/s pgpgout/s   fault/s  majflt/s

09:00:00 AM   2187.94    842.26      0.00      0.00
09:10:01 AM    353.43    809.87      0.00      0.00
09:20:00 AM     13.83   1090.68      0.00      0.00
09:30:00 AM     11.58    784.81      0.00      0.00
09:40:01 AM     10.53    879.31      0.00      0.00
09:50:01 AM     16.01   1060.91      0.00      0.00
10:00:00 AM     25.72   1148.84      0.00      0.00
10:10:01 AM     11.08   1240.19      0.00      0.00
10:20:01 AM      7.20    944.66      0.00      0.00
10:30:01 AM      6.74    798.89      0.00      0.00
10:40:00 AM      8.16   1138.00      0.00      0.00
10:49:59 AM     26.20   1299.30      0.00      0.00
11:00:01 AM     48.54   1389.26      0.00      0.00
11:10:01 AM     41.01   1329.57      0.00      0.00
11:20:00 AM     31.18   1134.27      0.00      0.00
11:30:00 AM     12.41    970.13      0.00      0.00