Server Load question

Hello,

I just had a server skyrocket to ~700.0 server load. When it was up that high, there were around 1200 processes (I checked "top"). Mostly all of them were sleeping. I am shocked by the 1200 processes, and I'm thinking this had something to do with the high server load.

Anyway, the machine had a 110 day uptime, and had averaged around 1.0 - 3.0 for all of the 110 days. I rebooted the machine (and added some ram while it was down Server Load question ) . I pasted the results from a top command below.

If you guys could take a look at it and let me know if you see anything out of the ordinary, I'd appreciate it! (The machine is a dual p3 1GHZ with 1GB ram and u/160 SCSI drives).

4:30pm up 45 min, 5 users, load average: 2.35, 2.26, 1.67
268 processes: 257 sleeping, 3 running, 2 zombie, 6 stopped
CPU0 states: 10.1% user, 9.5% system, 0.0% nice, 79.3% idle
CPU1 states: 17.1% user, 7.2% system, 0.0% nice, 75.1% idle
4:39pm up 53 min, 5 users, load average: 1.29, 1.64, 1.64
266 processes: 260 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 5 stopped
CPU0 states: 2.2% user, 11.2% system, 0.0% nice, 86.0% idle
CPU1 states: 4.3% user, 6.5% system, 0.0% nice, 88.1% idle
Mem: 1027804K av, 1003588K used, 24216K free, 364K shrd, 28112K buff
Swap: 530104K av, 328K used, 529776K free 561204K cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
10574 root 9 0 1196 1196 816 S 2.9 0.1 1:01 top
23737 root 14 0 1192 1192 816 R 2.7 0.1 0:16 top
25272 nobody 9 0 10816 10M 9156 S 1.5 1.0 0:00 httpd
24437 nobody 10 0 12216 11M 9076 S 0.9 1.1 0:01 httpd
9130 named 9 0 10300 10M 2228 S 0.5 1.0 0:04 named
18665 nobody 10 0 13100 12M 9064 S 0.5 1.2 0:05 httpd
18608 nobody 9 0 12840 12M 9096 S 0.3 1.2 0:04 httpd
18663 nobody 10 0 11948 11M 9064 S 0.3 1.1 0:02 httpd
20477 nobody 9 0 12904 12M 9068 S 0.3 1.2 0:03 httpd
24867 clockcre 19 19 1488 1488 1384 S N 0.3 0.1 0:00 webalizer
18583 nobody 9 0 13708 13M 9080 S 0.1 1.3 0:07 httpd
18657 nobody 9 0 12132 11M 9084 S 0.1 1.1 0:03 httpd
18692 nobody 9 0 11036 10M 9016 S 0.1 1.0 0:01 httpd
23099 nobody 9 0 12364 12M 9064 S 0.1 1.2 0:01 httpd
24593 nobody 9 0 11444 11M 9164 S 0.1 1.1 0:01 httpd
24860 clockcre 19 19 1488 1488 1384 S N 0.1 0.1 0:00 webalizer
24863 clockcre 19 19 1488 1488 1384 S N 0.1 0.1 0:00 webalizer
25209 nobody 9 0 9284 9284 8992 S 0.1 0.9 0:00 httpd
25505 nobody 9 0 9264 9264 8996 S 0.1 0.9 0:00 httpd
25572 root 11 0 2396 2396 1960 S 0.1 0.2 0:00 sendmail
1 root 4 0 524 524 456 S 0.0 0.0 0:04 init
2 root 8 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 keventd
3 root 19 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU0
4 root 19 19 0 0 0 SWN 0.0 0.0 0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU1
5 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kswapd
6 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kreclaimd
7 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 bdflush
8 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 kupdated
9 root -1 -20 0 0 0 SW< 0.0 0.0 0:00 mdrecoveryd
10 root 9 0 0 0 0 SW 0.0 0.0 0:00 phpd_notify

 

 

 

 

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