Re: [cobalt-users] CPU heavily loaded, low on memory, smtp server not responding

[Brian Rahill <cobalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > #1. (at 5:07 this morning) "Over the past fifteen minutes, the CPU has 
> been
> > heavily loaded", etc..
> First, to clear a common misconception:  Load average is *not*
> CPU usage.

Thanks for the info. Regardless my box was evidently under some serious strain.

> How about disk intensive?  How much swap are you using?
> What does the "procinfo" command show?
> Do you perhaps have a runaway CGI script?

It's hard to say on any of these as I didn't catch it "in the act" The load 
average is fine now back to around 0.17.


> > I checked my logcheck messages and the only thing I found
> > strange was tons of "lame server" and "bad referral" messages.
> Someone has you listed as being authoritative for DNS zones for
> which you are not.

I got some many "bad referral" message it was crazy.  I'm used to about 10 
lame server messages and about 1 or 2 bad referral messages every hour or 
so.  But hundreds within an hour is unprecedented.

> That's odd.  Maybe coincidence, maybe not.  I've never tried
> running BIND with such a high loadavg;

Do you think it was related to the load average then?

> Start "top" at root.  Press "M" --
> Also, if you
> ps ax | grep http | wc -l

Thanks for all the great commands.  Again, this box currently isn't acting 
up, but next time I'll use these.
I was thinking this looked like a DOS or something.  Still don't know.

Brian