High CPU Load every couple of days

[dwmtractor]

I don't have much experience with Ubuntu on servers, but do you have anything in /var/log/sa ? The files in there may provide some useful system information over the "wait" periods.

Mark

That particular file doesn't exist on my Ubuntu server, but /var/log/syslog has a ton of information.

[mdeneen]

The sysstat package provides a lot of valuable information. You should look at installing it. :-)

00:00:01       proc/s
00:10:01         0.34
00:20:01         0.35
00:30:01         0.34
00:40:01         0.34
00:50:01         0.34
01:00:01         0.35
01:10:01         0.38

00:00:01      cswch/s
00:10:01      3091.16
00:20:01      2800.56
00:30:01      2903.37
00:40:01      3229.92
00:50:01      2851.56
01:00:01      2840.94
01:10:01      3709.40

00:00:01          CPU     %user     %nice   %system   %iowait     %idle
00:10:01          all      1.90      0.00      0.43      0.07     97.59
00:10:01            0      2.72      0.00      0.58      0.06     96.63
00:10:01            1      1.08      0.00      0.28      0.08     98.56
00:20:01          all      1.24      0.00      0.31      0.04     98.41
00:20:01            0      1.69      0.00      0.43      0.04     97.83
00:20:01            1      0.79      0.00      0.19      0.04     98.98
00:30:01          all      1.46      0.00      0.34      0.06     98.14
00:30:01            0      2.04      0.00      0.46      0.07     97.43
00:30:01            1      0.89      0.00      0.22      0.05     98.85

00:00:01         INTR    intr/s
00:10:01          sum   1320.20
00:20:01          sum   1210.77
00:30:01          sum   1247.31
00:40:01          sum   1597.71
00:50:01          sum   1228.46
01:00:01          sum   1207.93
01:10:01          sum   2122.03
01:20:01          sum   1239.58
01:30:01          sum   1180.11
01:40:01          sum   2195.61

00:00:01     CPU  i000/s  i004/s  i008/s  i009/s  i010/s  i011/s  i014/s  i217/s
00:10:01       0  500.12    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    6.13    4.50  298.66
00:10:01       1  500.19    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    6.11    4.50    0.00
00:20:01       0  501.03    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    5.87    4.36  190.12
00:20:01       1  499.32    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    5.44    4.63    0.00
00:30:01       0  500.22    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    6.17    4.35  226.25
00:30:01       1  500.15    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    5.72    4.65    0.00
00:40:01       0  500.20    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    4.03    6.00  576.68
00:40:01       1  500.11    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    7.51    3.00    0.00
00:50:01       0  500.17    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    6.19    4.35  207.03

00:00:01     pswpin/s pswpout/s
00:10:01         0.00      0.00
00:20:01         0.00      0.00
00:30:01         0.00      0.00
00:40:01         0.00      0.00
00:50:01         0.00      0.00
01:00:01         0.00      0.00
01:10:01         0.00      0.00

... and gobs of other statistics.  This was from a fairly idle server, so it's not all that interesting.

That particular file doesn't exist on my Ubuntu server, but /var/log/syslog has a ton of information.

[dwmtractor]

The sysstat package provides a lot of valuable information. You should look at installing it. :-)

Sure looks cool. I went out and got it (apt-get install) and the installer created the cron jobs, installed the binaries, created a /var/log/sysstat directory, but the cron job returns "no output" when I try to run it manually, and running just the /usr/lib/sysstat/sa1, while it creates a file in that sysstat directory, it's an unreadable binary file. Reading the documentation I'm clearly missing something -- likely something blindingly obvious. Can you clue me in?

Never mind. Found my answers on the Ubuntu forum.

[mdeneen]

Once a day it will create a "sar" file, named "sarXX" where XX is the day of the month. Once the job runs for a bit, you will be able to get some stats by running "sar". Tomorrow, you will have a new file in /var/log/sa with stats from the previous day. You can always see what has been gathered for today with the "sar -A" command.

Sure looks cool. I went out and got it (apt-get install) and the installer created the cron jobs, installed the binaries, created a /var/log/sysstat directory, but the cron job returns "no output" when I try to run it manually, and running just the /usr/lib/sysstat/sa1, while it creates a file in that sysstat directory, it's an unreadable binary file. Reading the documentation I'm clearly missing something -- likely something blindingly obvious. Can you clue me in?