<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Blammo <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:blammo.doh@gmail.com" target="_blank">blammo.doh@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Check VMstat, dstat, but I suspect either disk or network IO.<br>
Something kernel level not assigned to an individual process.<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br>Thanks Blammo, I might have figured this out. I've been reading a little...<br>
<br>
I found this page: <a href="http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averages">http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/07/31/understanding-load-averages</a> that explains load average and that lead me to this page: <a href="http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2011/02/10/understanding-disk-i-o-when-should-you-be-worried">http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2011/02/10/understanding-disk-i-o-when-should-you-be-worried</a>
that explains disk i/o. It took me a little while but I finally
realized that they are actually advertisements, albeit very well
written. Anyway, you're right, it seems that most of my problem is likely my slow 5400rpm disk or my network connection. I'm probably getting a very slow write performance and this causes the CPU to spend most of it's time waiting for the data (2.3%wa in my original post). The CPU wait % is defined as load even though the CPU utilization is idle.<br>
<br>Is my thinking correct?<br></div></div><br>