On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 10:18:59AM +0100, Zbigniew Szalbot wrote: > Dear Kris and others, > > On Thu, 9 Nov 2006, Kris Kennaway wrote: > > >OK, you'll need to do some more diagnosis along the lines of my previous > >email then. > > Here's my typical load: > > last pid: 96934; load averages: 0.03, 0.06, 0.05 up 29+20:47:07 > 10:16:09 > 68 processes: 1 running, 67 sleeping > CPU states: 0.4% user, 0.0% nice, 0.4% system, 0.0% interrupt, 99.2% > idle > Mem: 140M Active, 35M Inact, 103M Wired, 12M Cache, 41M Buf, 15M Free > Swap: 512M Total, 127M Used, 385M Free, 24% Inuse > > Swap use is around 22%. This box mostly functions as mail server and there > are times when it gets a lot of emails to send. The load goes higher then. > The highest I recall (with no freeze mind you) was about 7.something. But > typically it does not go above 1.5.
The fact that swap is in use, together with your description, indicates that your system is overloaded; those transient loads are causing it to periodically demand more working memory than is backed by RAM, so the system goes into a frenzy of swapping trying to accomodate, and system performance falls in the toilet until the load goes away. Add more RAM or limit the workload. Kris
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