Madhu  <enometh@meer.net> wrote:
+---------------
| Rob Warnock <rpw3@rpw3.org> wrote:
| | Not a problem. The only reason I was being pretty stubborn about it
| | was that Linux is the *only* place I've ever seen these silly 100+
| | load averages on essentially idle systems!!
| 
| By essentially idle I assume you mean no process shows 100% CPU
| utilization (using `top', say)
+---------------

No, I mean that: (1) no process was showing *any* CPU usage
[except a fraction of a percent for "top"]; (2) there was
*no* network traffic [checked with "tcpdump"]; and (3) since
the box was a NAS filer, network traffic is the *only* potential
workload there is [no "user" apps at all, except my shell].
Oh, and the "nfsd" processes were all showing *zero* CPU
consumption. And yet the load average was between 80-250
[probably higher the more NFS filesystems were exported].


-Rob

p.s. By the way, the only reason I said "essentially idle" instead
of "absolutely 100% totally idle" is that there are a few logging
tasks that run for a small fraction of a second every 5 minutes,
but given that there was nothing for them to log... ;-}  ;-}

-----
Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607