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newbie14
Asked: 2012-05-29 05:47:28 +0800 CST

Top being high but not much processors are running on high cpu usage?

  • 772

I have a machine running a very small java listener and no body is using this machine but load is like staying between 0.9 to 0.6 for nearly sometime? IS it any indication here? What could be causing to go high when there is very little activity on the server? I saw a lot of events/3,hald-addon-stor,init,kthreadd, miniserv.pl etc running what are there?

top - 21:43:46 up 1 day,  7:50,  1 user,  load average: 0.92, 0.40, 0.20
Tasks: 251 total,   1 running, 249 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.1%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.8%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   7992392k total,  5426492k used,  2565900k free,   203156k buffers
Swap:  6094840k total,        0k used,  6094840k free,  4605780k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
  434 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   0:29.63 scsi_eh_4
 6168 root      20   0 20204 1248 1068 S  0.3  0.0   0:33.11 hald-addon-stor
 9021 root      20   0 15152 1348  932 R  0.3  0.0   0:01.33 top
 9162 root      20   0     0    0    0 Z  0.3  0.0   0:00.04 miniserv. <defunct>
    1 root      20   0 19332 1528 1220 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.33 init
    2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 kthreadd
    3 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0
    4 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.25 ksoftirqd/0
    5 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0
    6 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.08 watchdog/0
    7 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.09 migration/1
    8 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/1
    9 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.21 ksoftirqd/1
   10 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.08 watchdog/1
   11 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/2
   12 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/2

cpu info (I am having 8 cpus)

processor   : 7
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 44
model name  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           E5640  @ 2.67GHz
stepping    : 2
cpu MHz     : 1596.000
cache size  : 12288 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
core id     : 10
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 21
initial apicid  : 21
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt aes lahf_lm ida arat dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 5333.16
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
top centos6.2

2 Answers

  1. Take a look at this excellent article explaining Load Averages : http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averages

    0.9 Load Average Value is not a bad value if you have more than one CPU Core and chances are that your ~8 Gb Memory Machine has at least 2 CPU Cores.

    • 3
    • events/3,kthreadd e.a. are basic system daemons
    • hald-addon-stor is part of the "hardware abstraction layer" allowing you to automount USB disk etc.
    • init: is the basic process from which all other are spawned
    • miniserv.pl is part of webmin and appears to have crashed from the top output (the process is "defunct")
    • 1