[K12OSN] Sever load , calculating

[Les Mikesell]

On 9/10/2010 12:59 PM, Barry Cisna wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> Thanks to all for ideas...
>
> OK, I did find a couple interesting things in regards to CPU info.
> (This is listed in dmesg as P4/Xeon Extended,,blah,,blah,,,)
>
> When doing an cat /proc/cpuinfo  The OS is seeing the processor as only
> 1,so I must have jacked upped and didn't enable 'hyper-threading' in the
> system bios. My bad. I think Monday I'll go into Bios and enable this
> and see if the thing boots up alright? Anyone have any ideas on this
> try?,,,:)
>
> Also when I do an dmesg | grep CPU,,,I get a line saying
> " CPU0 Temperature above threshold,cpu clock throttled".
> So I am guessing this could be hindering performance somewhat?
> All fans appear correct as I popped open the case lid and they seem to
> be spinning like mad as they should.
>
> Also In regards to question when I run top,I never see any processes
> eating cpu at all. This is what has me puzzled for the heavy loads
> showing at times?

The ide drives sound like the weak link in that system.  What do you see 
in %iowait with sar or iostat?  And what kind of times do you see as the 
lower number from 'htparm -t -T devicename'?  If it seems low, (below 
50MB/sec or so), look through dmseg or /var/log/messages to see how it 
is detected.  You should see something like:
hda: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63, 
UDMA(100)

If it isn't UDMA(100) or higher you might need a newer controller - or 
lower modes can be triggered by a bad or old style cable.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com