It does look like you're being bitten by that bug.
You can kill off the cat processes easily enough with something like:
ps auwwx |grep "cat /sys/hypervisor/uuid" | awk '{ print $2 }' |xargs kill -9
The cron.hourly script is calling mcelog.cron which is supplied by the mcelog package. If you don't need that package then either remove it (yum remove mcelog) or get rid of the script from cron.hourly (or make it non-executable).
You haven't mentioned that this server is acting as a xen hypervisor so getting rid of the xen kernel if it's not needed might be a good idea, but would definitely require a reboot.
-----Original Message-----
From: redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Margaret Doll
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:49 PM
To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list
Subject: Looking for job which is causing a large work load
I found the zombie to be
F S UID PID PPID C PRI NI ADDR SZ WCHAN TTY TIME CMD
4 Z 99 5334 5209 0 75 0 - 0 exit ? 00:00:00
dnsmasq <defunct>
which was started by
root 5209 1 0 2009 ? 00:00:00 libvirtd --daemon
nobody 5334 5209 0 2009 ? 00:00:00 [dnsmasq] <defunct>
I also found 622 cat programs in a sleeping state
root 2213 2211 0 Feb02 ? 00:00:00 cat /sys/hypervisor/uuid
root 2244 2242 0 Feb11 ? 00:00:00 cat /sys/hypervisor/uuid
root 2297 2295 0 Feb14 ? 00:00:00 cat /sys/hypervisor/uuid
root 2314 2312 0 Feb07 ? 00:00:00 cat /sys/hypervisor/uuid
root 2350 2348 0 Jan29 ? 00:00:00 cat /sys/hypervisor/uuid
This is described in a bug report on
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=525386
From the history of the bug report, it show that the problem was
resolved. I have not been able to find the resolution.
free
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 16099528 15190480 909048 0 491696
11839316
-/+ buffers/cache: 2859468 13240060
Swap: 6127608 105888 6021720
ps auwwx contains a lot of
??? print progname ":\n"????? progname="";???? }????
{ print; }
root 677 0.0 0.0 3796 400 ? D Feb02 0:00 cat /
sys/hypervisor/uuid
root 698 0.0 0.0 106652 1608 ? S Feb10 0:00 crond
root 699 0.0 0.0 8700 1036 ? Ss Feb10 0:00 /bin/
bash /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
root 700 0.0 0.0 8700 972 ? S Feb10 0:00 /bin/
bash /etc/cron.hourly/mcelog.cron
root 701 0.0 0.0 8768 668 ? S Feb10 0:00 awk -
v progname=/etc/cron.hourly/mcelog.cron progname {????? print
progname ":\n"????? progname="";???? }???? { print; }
root 702 0.0 0.0 3796 400 ? D Feb10 0:00 cat /
sys/hypervisor/uuid
root 773 0.0 0.0 106652 1608 ? S Feb06 0:00 crond
root 774 0.0 0.0 8700 1040 ? Ss Feb06 0:00 /bin/
bash /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
root 775 0.0 0.0 8700 964 ? S Feb06 0:00 /bin/
bash /etc/cron.hourly/mcelog.cron
root 776 0.0 0.0 8768 672 ? S Feb06 0:00 awk -
v progname=/etc/cron.hourly/mcelog.cron progname {????? print
progname ":\n"????? progname="";???? }???? { print; }
root 777 0.0 0.0 3796 400 ? D Feb06 0:00 cat /
sys/hypervisor/uuid
root 803 0.0 0.0 106652 1608 ? S Feb02 0:00 crond
root 804 0.0 0.0 8700 1036 ? Ss Feb02 0:00 /bin/
bash /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
root 805 0.0 0.0 8700 972 ? S Feb02 0:00 /bin/
bash /etc/cron.hourly/mcelog.cron
root 806 0.0 0.0 8768 668 ? S Feb02 0:00 awk -
v progname=/etc/cron.hourly/mcelog.cron progname {????? print
progname ":\n"????? progname="";???? }???? { print; }
root 807 0.0 0.0 3796 400 ? D Feb02 0:00 cat /
sys/hypervisor/uuid
root 837 0.0 0.0 106652 1608 ? S Feb10 0:00 crond
root 838 0.0 0.0 8700 1040 ? Ss Feb10 0:00 /bin/
bash /usr/bin/run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
root 839 0.0 0.0 8700 968 ? S Feb10 0:00 /bin/
bash /etc/cron.hourly/mcelog.cron
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