sudden peak in load average
Mark Tinguely
tinguely at casselton.net
Wed Feb 27 13:47:07 UTC 2008
> >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).
By any chance, do you run SpamAssassin? I have seen load average bursts with
SA. It seems to me that spam sites are bursting spam to attempt to bring
down the anti-spam filters.
As mentioned by others a "ps" (or I prefer "pstree") list will help
solve the issue.
--Mark Tinguely
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