Re: [CentOS] High load since passing from rhas3 to centos4.8

2010-01-14 Thread Kwan Lowe
On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 2:12 PM,  fortin.pie...@bell.ca wrote:
 We are migrating HP servers from RHAS3 to centos 4.8. Since, the load
 average is reaching really high values. Under usage we see loads of 15-20
 instead of the 0.5-1.5 we were used to.

 I searched a lot for information on such an issue. Iostat, vmstat, top, ps.
 But I don’t get significant hint.

 Cpu usage remains low, IO wait remains low, no disks are lagging, no swap
 usage.



 Are there some tool / other way to diagnose why the load average is high?
 Like which processes are waiting, where they are stuck. Are there calls to
 drivers or system process that are slow?

Are you by any chance now running a CPU throttling program and weren't before?
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Re: [CentOS] High load since passing from rhas3 to centos4.8

2010-01-14 Thread fortin.pierre
 We are migrating HP servers from RHAS3 to centos 4.8. Since, the load
 average is reaching really high values. Under usage we see loads of 15-20
 instead of the 0.5-1.5 we were used to.

 I searched a lot for information on such an issue. Iostat, vmstat, top, ps.
 But I don't get significant hint.

 Cpu usage remains low, IO wait remains low, no disks are lagging, no swap
 usage.



 Are there some tool / other way to diagnose why the load average is high?
 Like which processes are waiting, where they are stuck. Are there calls to
 drivers or system process that are slow?

Are you by any chance now running a CPU throttling program and weren't before?

ACPI is not enabled. Other than that I couldn't tell. Sorry if it sounds noob.
What can I check to be sure nothing is throttling the CPU?

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Re: [CentOS] High load since passing from rhas3 to centos4.8

2010-01-14 Thread Les Mikesell
On 1/14/2010 1:12 PM, fortin.pie...@bell.ca wrote:
 We are migrating HP servers from RHAS3 to centos 4.8. Since, the load
 average is reaching really high values. Under usage we see loads of
 15-20 instead of the 0.5-1.5 we were used to.

 I searched a lot for information on such an issue. Iostat, vmstat, top,
 ps. But I don’t get significant hint.

 Cpu usage remains low, IO wait remains low, no disks are lagging, no
 swap usage.

 Are there some tool / other way to diagnose why the load average is
 high? Like which processes are waiting, where they are stuck. Are there
 calls to drivers or system process that are slow?

I don't have an answer but out of curiosity, why would you move to a 4.x 
instead of 5.x now?

You might be able to do some ps snapshots to see the process in R state, 
which is what the load average should be counting.  That might be 
computed differently between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
lesmikes...@gmail.com
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Re: [CentOS] High load since passing from rhas3 to centos4.8

2010-01-14 Thread fortin.pierre

 We are migrating HP servers from RHAS3 to centos 4.8. Since, the load
 average is reaching really high values. Under usage we see loads of
 15-20 instead of the 0.5-1.5 we were used to.

 I searched a lot for information on such an issue. Iostat, vmstat, top,
 ps. But I don't get significant hint.

 Cpu usage remains low, IO wait remains low, no disks are lagging, no
 swap usage.

 Are there some tool / other way to diagnose why the load average is
 high? Like which processes are waiting, where they are stuck. Are there
 calls to drivers or system process that are slow?

I don't have an answer but out of curiosity, why would you move to a 4.x 
instead of 5.x now?

You might be able to do some ps snapshots to see the process in R state, 
which is what the load average should be counting.  That might be 
computed differently between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.

The purpose of the server is to run NMS Telephony cards. The only support is 
for Centos 4.x on 32 bit systems. Anyway, since I have not found the trouble, 
it may still be there with another centos version.

When I execute multiple ps during high load average period (above 10), here is 
the kind of output I have:

ps aux | grep  R
USER   PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY  STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root 16295  0.0  0.0  3492  772 pts/1R+   15:45   0:00 ps -aux
root 16296  0.0  0.0  5400  648 pts/1S+   15:45   0:00 grep  R

I see a lot of process in S, Sl, Ss+ and Ssl states.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
lesmikes...@gmail.com
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Re: [CentOS] High load since passing from rhas3 to centos4.8

2010-01-14 Thread Kwan Lowe
On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 3:02 PM,  fortin.pie...@bell.ca wrote:
Are you by any chance now running a CPU throttling program and weren't 
before?

 ACPI is not enabled. Other than that I couldn't tell. Sorry if it sounds noob.
 What can I check to be sure nothing is throttling the CPU?


Check if you're running cpuspeed and perhaps cat out /proc/cpuinfo and
look at the CPU MhZ entry. If it doesn't match the advertised speed of
your CPU then you likely have some sort of throttling enabled.

Here's the best article I've found on the CPU speed and top output:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9001

In short, if you're throttling your CPU (this generally being a *good*
thing, since it minimizes power usage but still provides the same
response) then the load average may seem to be higher.  But the real
metric to watch is how many processes are waiting rather than the load
stat from top.
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Re: [CentOS] High load since passing from rhas3 to centos4.8

2010-01-14 Thread JohnS

On Thu, 2010-01-14 at 15:47 -0500, fortin.pie...@bell.ca wrote:
  We are migrating HP servers from RHAS3 to centos 4.8. Since, the load
  average is reaching really high values. Under usage we see loads of
  15-20 instead of the 0.5-1.5 we were used to.
 
  I searched a lot for information on such an issue. Iostat, vmstat, top,
  ps. But I don't get significant hint.
---
Have you bothered to look at lsof?  I find it really usefull...

John

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Re: [CentOS] High load since passing from rhas3 to centos4.8

2010-01-14 Thread Fernando Gleiser
- Original Message 

 From: fortin.pie...@bell.ca fortin.pie...@bell.ca
 To: centos@centos.org
 Sent: Thu, January 14, 2010 5:47:43 PM
 Subject: Re: [CentOS] High load since passing from rhas3 to centos4.8
 
 
 
 The purpose of the server is to run NMS Telephony cards. The only support is 
 for 
 Centos 4.x on 32 bit systems. Anyway, since I have not found the trouble, it 
 may 
 still be there with another centos version.
 
 When I execute multiple ps during high load average period (above 10), here 
 is 
 the kind of output I have:
 
 ps aux | grep  R
 USER   PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY  STAT START   TIME COMMAND
 root 16295  0.0  0.0  3492  772 pts/1R+   15:45   0:00 ps -aux
 root 16296  0.0  0.0  5400  648 pts/1S+   15:45   0:00 grep  R
 
 I see a lot of process in S, Sl, Ss+ and Ssl states.

first of all, if you have high load average with seemingly low utilization, it 
may be because of load imbalance between CPUs and/or short bursts of lots of 
short cpu-intensive processes.

Here's what I'd look at first:

run vmstat 1 10 and look at the first column. if it's higher than 1/ncpu 
you're having cpu saturation.

rum mpstat -P ALL 1 10, this gives you cpu utilisation per cpu (sar gives you 
the average among all processors)

Also take a look at sar -q 1 10 to look at the CPU's queues sizes


Hope this helps


Fer


  
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