too much cpu system time with kernel 2.6.9-22.0.2.EL

[tengel at fluid.com (Troy Engel)]

William (Bill) Triest wrote:
> 
> I am not a kernel hacker, so I'm hoping you will end up with a more 
> informed opinion, but it seems to me the real limiting factor would be 
> IO.  Disks are slow, and you claim you're writing to the disk.  IMHO, an 
> 800 MHz system should be able to handle ssh and gzip far easier then the 
> IO.

I concur -- gzip is a beast on the IO, this is most likely where your 
perceived lag is. Install the "sysstat" RPM on your machine (and make 
sure it's started) and let the 'sa' processes gather data for you.

Then, use iostat and 'sar -P ALL' to examine the relative IO alongside 
the CPU usage and you'll have a much clearer picture. It's possible 
you're running out of ram during the gzip (hey, who knows!) and are 
hitting your swap, which could be a killer.

-te

-- 
Troy Engel | Systems Engineer
Fluid, Inc | http://www.fluid.com