Why kswapd process using 100% CPU on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ?

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Issue

  • Why kswapd process using 100% CPU ?
    Eg:
# top
top - 00:00:33 up 44 days, 17:02, 21 users,  load average: 7.44, 3.85, 3.15
Tasks: 717 total,   4 running, 707 sleeping,   4 stopped,   2 zombie
Cpu(s): 28.4% us, 32.1% sy,  0.0% ni, 37.2% id,  1.2% wa,  0.1% hi,  1.1% si
Mem:  17445460k total, 14133564k used,  3311896k free,    15004k buffers
Swap: 33553704k total, 20546704k used, 13007000k free,   801008k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
  111 root      25   0     0    0    0 R 98.3  0.0  37544:26 kswapd0

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4,5,6
  • kswapd

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