init's high CPU usage (2.0.23)

James R. Leu (jleu@chaos.coredcs.com)
Thu, 14 Nov 1996 13:38:13 -0600 (CST)

I have a machine running 2.0.23. Recently the CPU usage has been quite
high. Most of the time I notice that init is taking up large abouts of CPU
time. When looking at long term xload graphs, one can see the very regular
spikes. Is there someway to find out why init is sucking so much CPU.

I would like to clarify that high CPU means very notable lag for interactive
sessions.

Here are the stats on the machine:
Pentium 200
128MB RAM
Adaptec 2940 - two drives
SMC EtherPower Ethernet Card

The system software is based off of a Slackware 3.1 install (which means
it has SysVinit 2.62)

It handle DNS, sendmail, httpd, and Shell accounts.

(I realize this a lot for one machine, but it predisesor a
Pentium 166 w/80MB RAM handle these same task with minimal CPU load,
it ran kernel version 1.3.70.)

Here is a snap shot of the system:
1:12pm up 6 days, 18:17, 6 users, load average: 2.74, 2.60, 2.57

USER PID %CPU %MEM SIZE RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 3.3 0.1 776 144 ? S Nov 7 328:47 init [3]
root 12 0.0 0.0 752 88 ? S Nov 7 3:50 /sbin/update
root 36 0.1 0.2 844 260 ? S Nov 7 14:16 /usr/sbin/syslogd
root 38 0.0 0.2 932 296 ? S Nov 7 0:00 /usr/sbin/klogd
root 40 0.0 0.1 772 212 ? S Nov 7 2:26 /usr/sbin/inetd
root 44 0.1 6.2 8488 8008 ? S Nov 7 18:43 /usr/sbin/named
root 46 0.0 0.1 788 188 ? S Nov 7 0:00 /usr/sbin/lpd
root 54 0.0 0.3 1188 488 ? S Nov 7 2:09 sendmail: accepting c
root 312 0.0 0.1 772 180 ? S Nov 7 0:02 /usr/sbin/watchdog
root 481 0.0 0.1 768 136 2 S Nov 7 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tt
{snip}

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 127876 125216 2660 30744 40324 31984
-/+ buffers: 52908 74968
Swap: 88352 492 87860

Any suggestions on where to look?
James

-- 
James R. Leu
Network Administrator
CORE Digital Communication Services
jleu@coredcs.com