[Nolug] 50% CPU usage by System processes?

Anybody know why I might see about 50% of my CPU time used up by System
processes on a linux box?

from top:
CPU states: 45.5% user, 53.7% system, 0.8% nice, 0.0% idle

and I can't figure out what's doing the 50%. is it possible it's just
packet handling overhead? I need to rip this machine off duty as my
firewall box, for other reasons, but this seems a bit extreme,
especially considering I shouldn't be doing much most of the time, and
it stays around there, though right now I'm downloading an ISO image.

So, anybody have any clues?
P

-- 
Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary 
safety, deserve neither Liberty nor safety.
					-- Ben Franklin
|| Peter M Kahle Jr              ||     PGP Public Key on Keyservers     ||
|| pkahle@pobox.com              ||    http://pops.dyndns.com/~pkahle/   || 
##===============================##======================================##

___________________
Nolug mailing list
nolug@nolug.org