RHEL6: Load average is higher or more sporadic after updating to kernel-2.6.32-573.22.1.el6
Issue
-
After updating the kernel from any RHEL 6 release to
2.6.32-573.22.1or higher, the load average has increased somewhat. No other issues are seen on the system other than the increased load average. -
Before the update, the idle load average is similar to the following:
less var/log/sa/sar22
- - - - - - - - 8< - - - - - - - -
12:00:01 AM runq-sz plist-sz ldavg-1 ldavg-5 ldavg-15
12:10:01 AM 1 193 0.01 0.02 0.00
12:20:01 AM 1 193 0.00 0.00 0.00
12:30:01 AM 1 193 0.00 0.00 0.00
12:40:01 AM 1 193 0.00 0.02 0.00
12:50:01 AM 1 193 0.00 0.00 0.00
01:00:01 AM 2 194 0.00 0.00 0.00
01:10:01 AM 1 193 0.00 0.00 0.00
01:20:01 AM 1 193 0.00 0.00 0.00
- - - - - - - - 8< - - - - - - - -
- After the update, the load averages increased and show values similar to the following:
#less var/log/sa/sar27
- - - - - - - - 8< - - - - - - - -
12:00:01 AM runq-sz plist-sz ldavg-1 ldavg-5 ldavg-15
12:10:01 AM 1 194 0.22 0.16 0.22
12:20:01 AM 1 194 0.31 0.25 0.24
12:30:01 AM 1 194 0.04 0.07 0.14
12:40:01 AM 1 194 0.39 0.23 0.17
12:50:01 AM 1 194 0.58 0.56 0.37
01:00:01 AM 3 198 0.67 0.65 0.52
01:10:01 AM 1 194 0.16 0.22 0.35
01:20:01 AM 1 194 0.25 0.20 0.28
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 and above
- Please check root cause. You can check if your current kernel is affected by verifying if the patches in "root cause" are present.
- Observed more easily when system is mostly idle and has smaller amounts of CPUs.
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