[Spacewalk-list] Spacewalk 1.7 CPU Maxed out by postgresql (8.4)

[Boyd, Robert]

There is probably nothing wrong (other than maybe some tuning needed?) with Spacewalk or PostgreSQL on this server.

It would appear that Red Hat released approximately 100 updates in the RHEL5 x86_64 space yesterday. At least that's what it looks like from the errata-sync log.   The errata got loaded into the master I'm running around the time I can see the cpu maxing out.   My guess is that it's crunching through auditing all of the client servers against the errata list since I'm getting bombarded (slowly) with Spacewalk Alert emails.     I'm curious as to why this activity would be generating so much cpu load for so long though.   We only have about 250 servers registered in the system.  It seems crazy that it would take hours to check 250 servers against 100 errata unless there's a serious problem in the design of the data / algorithm for doing the checks.

Is there any easy way to take a read on Spacewalk and see that it's busy?  Would be nice if there was a dashboard with meters giving a clue about whatever it's busy processing.  The way I finally figured out my situation this time was noticing the flood of emails and working back to the nightly errata sync logs to see the flood of updates imported this morning.

Robert Boyd
Sr System Engineer | Peoplefluent
p. 919-645-2972 | c. 919-306-4681
e. Robert.Boyd at peoplefluent.com
Visit: www.peoplefluent.com<http://www.peoplefluent.com/> | Read: Peoplefluent Blog<http://peoplefluent.com/resources/peoplefluent-blog>
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From: Boyd, Robert
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 11:44 AM
To: spacewalk-list at redhat.com
Subject: Spacewalk 1.7 CPU Maxed out by postgresql (8.4)

Sometime this morning my spacewalk server pegged 100% on cpu utilization and has been staying there ever since.   I tried a reboot, and just for grins updated errata/packages on the server.   After rebooting it's still pegging the cpu usage with this process:

postgres  2888 77.7  1.3 470128 53708 ?        Rs   10:35  52:05 postgres: spaceuser spaceschema 127.0.0.1(46206) SELECT

I am able to use  the Spacewalk admin website without any problem other than a bit of slow response.
How can I discover what is causing this (and hopefully fix it)?

Robert Boyd
Sr System Engineer | Peoplefluent
p. 919-645-2972 | c. 919-306-4681

e. Robert.Boyd at peoplefluent.com
Visit: www.peoplefluent.com<http://www.peoplefluent.com/> | Read: Peoplefluent Blog<http://peoplefluent.com/resources/peoplefluent-blog>
Follow: @peoplefluent<http://twitter.com/peoplefluent> | Download: iPad App<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/peoplefluent/id474251804?mt=8>
[cid:image005.jpg at 01CDED9A.0E5C02F0]<http://www.peoplefluent.com/>
[cid:image006.jpg at 01CDED9A.0E5C02F0]<http://www.peoplefluent.com/mobile-talent-management>

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