On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 6:48 AM, Darrin Chandler <dwchand...@stilyagin.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:07:33PM -0700, patrick keshishian wrote: >> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 3:50 AM, Richard Toohey >> <richardtoo...@paradise.net.nz> wrote: >> > On 3/06/2009, at 10:02 PM, BARDOU Pierre wrote: >> > >> >> Hello, >> >> >> >> I have performance issues on a OpenBSD 4.4 firewall. >> >> CPU load is OK (always below 50%), but system load is always between 1 and >> >> 1.5, it may go up to 2 sometimes. >> >> >> > [cut] >> > >> > And what is the actual *problem*? >> > >> > What is pf failing to do? >> > >> > Or are you just worried about the numbers? B Search the archives for "high >> > load" ... >> >> just for the record, i have seen a server where its typical load >> floats around 0.10 or so, but then something will happen and the >> plateau will get bumped to 1.10 and remain there. this was an 4.5 >> system. > > A sudden, significant, "permanent" change in load merely says that > something happened that may be interesting. It doesn't tell you anything > about what happened or if it's even a problem. > >> I have not identified what "event" caused this. I've seen similar >> issue with a couple of linux boxes at work where the load avg plateau >> will keep rising: it'll hover around ~3, then say ~6 then ~13. i don't >> think the issues are related, but could be caused by similar bugs in >> kernel. > > I've seen this too over the years on *BSD and Linux or a variety of > machines. Usually a few minutes with top(1), systat(1), et al will show > you what's going on. Until you find out there's not much to do.
I've only seen it on obsd once after upgrading it to 4.5. The very same box never showed anything like that when running 4.3. I'm monitoring it for another such change. I couldn't find anything "interesting" using any of the tools you mentioned (top, ps, systat, etc.), nor anything the logs. As for the linux systems, they are actually production systems at a customer site. The two are RH AS 4 boxes. Same exact server hardware configuration with RH ES 5 running same exact version of our code (though compiled for ES 5) doesn't present the same issue. We've chucked it up to a kernel bug in linux that is shipped with that version, also due to some other issues (including a pthread bug) in AS 4 we have dropped support for AS 4 and recommend our customers to upgrade to ES. > A change in load is like getting a billing statement with "Important: > changes to your account" printed on the envelope. You can run around > waving the envelope asking what changed, or you can look inside and find > out. > >> All systems continue to be responsive and it only seems that the >> reported load avg value is just bumped by a base value. It is >> definitely odd. > > So it's not a problem... yet. It may never be a problem. Or it could be. > Open the envelope and spend a few minutes reading the contents. ;-) as mentioned, I did best I could with the tools I knew of. Cheers, --patrick > -- > Darrin Chandler B B B B B B | B Phoenix BSD User Group B | B MetaBUG > dwchand...@stilyagin.com B | B http://phxbug.org/ B B B | B http://metabug.org/ > http://www.stilyagin.com/ B | B Daemons in the Desert B | B Global BUG Federation
