Investigate high load on RHEL

Posted by Adam Matan on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Adam Matan
Published on 2012-10-24T17:19:38Z Indexed on 2012/11/05 5:03 UTC
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redhat

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load

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top

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sar

One of my RHEL 5 was showing high load (~4-5) on uptime. The load increased, and when it reached 6 (±), the server froze and needed restart.

top-wise, the server had no significant CPU or memory issues and sar showed no increase in iowait. Therefore, the thrashing must have been related to other factors.

Any ideas how to investigate this? In particular, how do I know that which processes are waiting in the queue?

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