Re: [cobalt-users] Load Average High

[baltimoremd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, E.B. Dreger wrote:

> > Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 01:06:22 -0500 (EST)
> > From: baltimoremd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> > Tonight the load average on my server got greater than my blood sugar
> > level, either one of which getting high is not good for my health.
> >
> > It happened shortly after I posted a message to a large majordomo list on
> > the server....but after a reboot, it looks like 0.06, 0.07, 3.93
> >
> > Wondering where might be the best starting point to find the gremlin(s).
>
> A loadaverage spike of ~4 isn't that high, even for a little box
> with an IDE hard drive...

Oh, my error in posting.  Before the machine had to be rebooted because no
one would access it via www or ssh or a mail client, the load average had
crept up to 130 or so.

> Can you provide more details?

I think it's a customer's cgi script that's being a resource pig, since I
see some lines in the kernel log ala
Mar 21 00:08:48 ns1 kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for
prebot.cgi...
Mar 21 00:08:48 ns1 kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for
prebot.cgi...
Mar 21 00:08:48 ns1 kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for httpd...
Mar 21 00:08:48 ns1 kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for
prebot.cgi...

So, I'm half tempted to politely ask the guy to move on...since I'm not
sure he's savy enough to make the script less of a burden.

Thom