I've been experiencing really high CPU on a ruby on rails app (see stack below) and have been trying to diagnose the possible causes to no avail. Stack: ruby 1.9.3 rails 3.2.6 Apache/2.2.21 (Debian) Phusion Passenger 3.0.11 Whenever I run strace against the spiking Rack process PID (see Top excerpt below), I am seeing a tonne of stat("/etc/localtime") and clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME) calls and have no idea how to stop these. Excerpt from Top showin running PID: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 11674 www-user 20 0 313m 182m 5076 R 99 2.3 63:04.60 Rack: /var/www/my_rails_app/current 11634 www-user 20 0 411m 216m 5144 S 10 2.7 197:55.63 Rack: /var/www/my_rails_app/current Strace snippet below: [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 141474018}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 141577456}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 143073982}) = 0 [pid 11674] poll([{fd=15, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout) [pid 11674] write(15, "b\0\0\0\3SELECT `images`.* FROM `ima"..., 102) = 102 [pid 11674] read(15, "\1\0\0\1\0229\0\0\2\3def\23myappy_productio"..., 16384) = 2063 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 144138035}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 ... [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=118, ...}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 154076443}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 154189429}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 157185700}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 157298770}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 165076003}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 165212572}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 167542679}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354058955, 167683436}) = 0 .... [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 62052248}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 62182486}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 62919948}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 63057266}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 63751707}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 73730686}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 75874687}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 76077133}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 78205019}) = 0 ... [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 89370879}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 89583247}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 91637614}) = 0 [pid 11674] clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1354060036, 91782149}) = 0 Have Google'd around and came across a number of suggestions which I've tried with no success. Things tried so far: Have tried setting time zone as recommended here Made no difference and issue still persists. Content of my /etc/localtime: TZif2UTCTZif2UTC UTC0 Have tried the recommended fix for the leapsecond bug: date -s 'date' No joy so far. I'm fresh out of ideas so any help/advice on how to diagnose or resolve would be greatly appreciated.