High server load, but not true??

[Kurieuo]

Hi,

Since upgrade to the latest cPanel release, cPanel reports a high server load (5-7) however I don't think there really is a high load as:

1. Everything still responds quite fast whether accessing websites, email, accessing cPanel/WHM
2. No unusual process activity seems to be getting used.

Any one else experience similar things with cPanel with/without the latest release? Any ideas appreciated.

Thanks!

[cyberlinuxx]

Try executing the "top -c" command on the server and check what are the processes causing the load.

[Kurieuo]

Yeah, I've run top and I can't see anything which should be causing such a high load.

For example this is common every time I check and let it run for a bit:

top - 13:39:45 up 80 days, 34 min, 1 user, load average: 4.88, 4.92, 4.93
Tasks: 207 total, 4 running, 203 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 42.7%us, 29.8%sy, 1.1%ni, 19.0%id, 6.7%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.6%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1033700k total, 1006648k used, 27052k free, 48440k buffers
Swap: 2096472k total, 15664k used, 2080808k free, 607580k cached

6404 mysql 22 0 107m 25m 4328 S 6 2.5 6:49.55 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/ --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql --log-error=/var/lib/mysql/p
3549 nobody 16 0 36796 16m 2120 S 5 1.6 0:01.28 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL
5701 nobody 16 0 36796 16m 2104 S 5 1.6 0:00.93 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL
9003 nobody 16 0 36796 16m 2172 S 5 1.6 0:08.96 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL
9496 nobody 16 0 36796 16m 2144 S 5 1.6 0:02.74 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL
14684 nobody 16 0 36800 16m 2040 S 5 1.6 0:00.33 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL
13770 nobody 16 0 36796 16m 2100 S 4 1.6 0:03.42 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL
425 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 31:06.88 [md2_raid1]
19326 removed 18 0 22536 7132 5236 S 0 0.7 0:00.01 /usr/bin/php /home/removed/public_html/bannerRotator/banner_scripts/bannershow.php
29380 nobody 16 0 36796 16m 2152 S 0 1.6 0:10.18 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL
1 root 15 0 2064 588 512 S 0 0.1 0:37.63 init [3]
2 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:26.80 [migration/0]
3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:13.07 [ksoftirqd/0]


I will be restarting the server later tonight after a kernel upgrade, so will see if that settles whatever is going on.

[bin_asc]

Does this happen at regular times ? For now you should check the crons and see if there isn`t something set to run at that specific hour and/or check the logs as well for errors.

[Kurieuo]

No, it was fairly constant. I guess it could have been processes, but I've seen a lot more used in the processes with a lot less load.

Things seem to have normalised, especially since updating kernel and rebooting the server. So all good now.

Thanks for the responses!