load > 1, no process using >10% CPU...?

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Apr 19), Damian Gerow said:
> Thus spake Damian Gerow (dgerow at afflictions.org) [19/04/05 21:21]:
> : I'm a little fuzzy as to /how/ load is calculated, but why would my
> : system think that it's doing all kinds of work when ps, top, and
> : systat can't really tell me /what/ it's doing?
> 
> It turned out to be a runaway xmms process.  But I still find it
> strange that it didn't show anything obvious in top.

If xmms is threaded, you probably got bit by the "libpthread doesn't do
process CPU accounting" bug.  Most threaded processes will just show up
as 0 %CPU in top, no matter what they're doing.  The rusage stats are
handled correctly, though, so look for processes whose TIME value is
increasing at one (or more if you're SMP) seconds per second.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson at allantgroup.com