asterisk users - Mar 2006 - (unexplicable) peaks of machine load

I have strange peaks of machine load on my asterisk servers, looking at 
top the load is very high even if cpu usage is low and no swap memory is 
used.

This happens on all the machines, some of them have asterisk, mysql, agi 
and digium cards on them, so I thought I was only asking too much, but 
yesterday I noticed the same behaviour on an asterisk machine with only 
two digium in it, no other service and a two line extension.
I thought it can be a problem with digium cards but the interrupts 
aren't shared, and I have the same problem on a pure-voip server.

Asterisk version varies from 1.2.1 to 1.2.5, the kernels are 2.4 or 2.6 
(right ones for the installed cpu, not generic 386)
The only things in common are :

Linux debian, iax channels are used, with jitterbuffer

When this "ghost load" becomes too high (> 3) asterisk starts
losing
packets, and the users starts losing patience ...

Anyone experiencing a similar problem ?

I've noticed this as well from pre 1.0 versions through to 1.2.5
across 12 separate Asterisk servers. The severity seems to be random
mostly. I still haven't figured out what is causing it.

MATT---

On 3/15/06, Simone Cittadini <mymailforlists@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I have strange peaks of machine load on my asterisk servers, looking at
> top the load is very high even if cpu usage is low and no swap memory is
> used.
>
> This happens on all the machines, some of them have asterisk, mysql, agi
> and digium cards on them, so I thought I was only asking too much, but
> yesterday I noticed the same behaviour on an asterisk machine with only
> two digium in it, no other service and a two line extension.
> I thought it can be a problem with digium cards but the interrupts
> aren't shared, and I have the same problem on a pure-voip server.
>
> Asterisk version varies from 1.2.1 to 1.2.5, the kernels are 2.4 or 2.6
> (right ones for the installed cpu, not generic 386)
> The only things in common are :
>
> Linux debian, iax channels are used, with jitterbuffer
>
> When this "ghost load" becomes too high (> 3) asterisk starts
losing
> packets, and the users starts losing patience ...
>
> Anyone experiencing a similar problem ?
>
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Matt Florell ha scritto:
>Yep I use ext3, have you run test with any other file system?
>
>MATT---
>  
>
No, I will do when I have time (and a server to test on)
>
>  
>
>>Your file system is journaled ? this is another common thing that came
>>to my mind (ext3)
>>
>>    
>>