Re: [Nolug] 50% CPU usage by System processes?

At 10:49 PM 1/30/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>Anybody know why I might see about 50% of my CPU time used up by System
>processes on a linux box?

Perhaps it's I/O contention? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a process
blocks while waiting for I/O its CPU usage doesn't reflect time spent
working on the I/O request. Rather, that information is added to the system
usage stats. What does top reveal?

Regards, Dustin

>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/ ||
>##===============================##======================================##

---
Dustin Puryear <dpuryear@usa.net>
Information Systems Contractor (http://members.telocity.com/~dpuryear)
PGP Key for dpuryear@usa.net (http://www.us.pgp.net)
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