<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 12 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:SimSun;
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
@font-face
{font-family:Mangal;
panose-1:0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Tahoma;
panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:"\@SimSun";
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
p
{mso-style-priority:99;
mso-margin-top-alt:auto;
margin-right:0in;
mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
margin-left:0in;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
span.EmailStyle18
{mso-style-type:personal-reply;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
--></style><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="1026" />
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext="edit">
<o:idmap v:ext="edit" data="1" />
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>In top, does it show the same load values? The status of your memory shouldn’t cause the nagios plugin to report high cpu. What does the uptime command say? Try running the check_load script by hand on that host and verify it returns the same results.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><br>Dan<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Marc Powell [mailto:lists@xodus.org] <br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, December 06, 2010 3:26 PM<br><b>To:</b> Nagios Users List<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Nagios-users] Determining what is causing a high load reported by check_load plugin<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:50 PM, Kaplan, Andrew H. <<a href="mailto:AHKAPLAN@partners.org">AHKAPLAN@partners.org</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><div><p><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Hi there --</span> <o:p></o:p></p><p><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>We are running Nagios 3.1.2 server, and the client that is the subject of this e-mail is running version 2.6 of the nrpe client.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The check_load plugin, version 1.4, is indicating the past three readings are the following:</span> <o:p></o:p></p><p><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>load average: 71.00, 71.00, 70.95 CRITICAL</span> <o:p></o:p></p><p><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The critical threshold of the plugin has been set to the 30, 25, 20 settings.</span> <o:p></o:p></p><p><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>When I checked the client in question, the first thing I did was to run the top command. The results are shown below:</span> <o:p></o:p></p><p><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>CPU0 states: 0.0% user, 0.0% system, 0.0% nice, 100.0% idle</span> <br><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>CPU1 states: 0.0% user, 0.0% system, 0.0% nice, 100.0% idle</span> <br><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>CPU2 states: 1.0% user, 4.0% system, 0.0% nice, 93.0% idle</span> <br><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Mem: 2064324K av, 2032308K used, 32016K free, 0K shrd, 509924K buff</span> <br><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Swap: 2096472K av, 21432K used, 2075040K free 1035592K cached</span> <o:p></o:p></p><p><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The one thing that I noticed was the amount of free memory was at thirty-two megabytes. I wanted to know if that was</span> <br><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>what was causing the critical status to occur, or if there is something(s) else that I should investigate.</span><o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><br>Memory is not a factor in the load calculation, only the number of processes running or waiting to run. For at least 15 minutes you had approximately 71 processes either running or ready to run and waiting on CPU resources. Running top/ps was the right thing to do but you really need to do it when the problem is occurring to see what's actually using all the CPU resources. There are far too many reasons why load could be high but it should be easy for someone familiar with your system to figure it out (at least generally) while in-the-act.<br><br>--<br>Marc<o:p></o:p></p></div></div></div></body></html>