[Linux-cluster] Too large load on the login node

[Steven Whitehouse]

Hi,

On Thu, 2009-10-01 at 11:36 +0200, Nicolas Ferré wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We recently installed a new cluster composed of 1 login node and several 
> computing nodes running CentOS. These nodes share a GFS2 fs made of two 
> partitions.
> 
> A strange thing is that on each node, the activity load (as monitored by 
> the 'top' command) is always larger than 1. After some googling, it 
> seems someone already reported this problem but I can't see any solution.
> Moreover, on the login node, the load is even larger:
> top - 11:34:17 up 1 day, 22:07,  1 user,  load average: 16.19, 16.20, 16.12
> while there is no cpu-intensive running processes.
> 
> Do you have an explanation?

Processes in uninterruptible sleep are counted in the load average. One
of the gfs2 daemons (in early versions) was set to sleep in this way. I
suggest that you should upgrade to a more recent version (simply because
a number of other bugs have been fixed since then) although the
uninterruptible sleep is harmless aside from its effect on the load
average,

Steve.