runaway crond ?

[jols]

We're up to the very latest (release) cPanel and WHM, up to the latest Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. but still I am seeing this weird issue. This one has always baffled me. What do you suppose is going on with this?:

1 -- Server load shoots up to over 60.

2 -- ps -ef shows a kazillion of theses entries:

root 4672 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4673 4672 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4674 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4675 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4676 4674 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4677 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4678 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4679 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4680 4678 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4682 4675 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4684 4679 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4685 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4686 4677 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4687 4685 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4688 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4689 4688 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4690 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4693 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4694 4690 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4695 4693 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4696 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4698 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4701 4698 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4702 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4703 4696 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4704 4702 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4705 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4706 4705 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4707 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4708 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4710 4707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4711 4708 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4712 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4714 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4715 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4716 4715 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4717 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4718 4712 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4719 4714 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4720 4717 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond
root 4721 2707 0 16:34 ? 00:00:00 crond

etc. etc. etc.


What could be happening here? I've check the user crontabs on the server and there really are not that many set up, no more than usual.

Thanks in advance for any quick advice with this.


P.S. Would restarting crond every two minutes (to avoid this) hurt anything?

[jols]

Anyone? Anyone?

[cpanelkenneth]

I suggest opening a support ticket at https://tickets.cpanel.net/submit/

[jols]

Thanks, I'll do this when I get half-a-chance.

In the meantime, can you tell me what the ramifications will be if I set up a cron, to restart crond every two minutes? Will the normal scheduled crons still run?

By the way, this pestering, intermittent issue has been occurring with seemingly all of our cPanel servers, for a very long time, at least over the past 16 months or so. But it is very intermittent, occuring perhaps only once per week with one, among a dozen or so servers.