Problem with LOAD of System

[ZIYAD A. M. AL-BATLY]

On Fri, 2005-09-16 at 13:39 -0700, Chris C wrote:
> nope³ but thanks for your pain :-)
> 
> 
> mrkofee at daisy:~$ uptime
>  13:37:12 up 4 days,  9:14,  3 users,  load average: 825.40, 824.24, 821.62
> 
> top - 13:38:03 up 4 days,  9:15,  3 users,  load average: 824.67, 824.25, 
> 821.7 Tasks: 4147 total,   1 running, 4145 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
> Cpu(s): 26.0% us, 31.3% sy,  0.0% ni, 38.8% id,  1.4% wa,  0.0% hi,  2.5% si
> Mem:    516300k total,   509980k used,     6320k free,     1448k buffers
> Swap:   999928k total,   858416k used,   141512k free,    77928k cached
> 
> kind regards
> 
I remember I had a similar problem in the past (with Debian, and by
"problem" I mean I can't run "ps", it simply stop responding in the
terminal).  The cause was either one of:
     1. System can't access the drive.  There's a failure in the
        file-system (either Hardware or Software).  Rebooting fixes this
        kind of problem (assuming it's not a permanent Hardware
        failure).  You can check by trying to create a new file in each
        file-system on your system and see what happens.  (I really
        don't know how to explain the unbelievably high load in this
        case.)
     2. There was a Kernel panic that didn't led to a complete crash!
        You could check by viewing the output of "dmesg" or reading the
        "/var/log/syslog*" files.
     3. An unsuccessful "Kernel module" *unloading* happened.  This is
        the most reason for my previous system to act as described
        above.  (I was compiling a lot of third party modules; most
        notably, the "RivaTV" module.)

In most cases, rebooting the system will most likely fix it.  Also, I
can (in some cases) view the system processes using GNOME's
"gnome-system-monitor" while the command "pc" fails!

Hope this is helpful (though, I doubt it).
Ziyad.