Y'all: I'm running a few instances of 5-stable under VMWare ESX 2.51 on several dual-processor HP BL20P 3Ghz+ Xeon servers. The system load runs normally for network processes like apache and mysql, but for any process which utilizes nanosleep() or usleep() in a while loop there's between 1-2% of CPU consumed, even when the processes have no tasks performing beside the sleep. Running the same processes on actual hardware in an identical configuration (5-STABLE on physical blade) shows no CPU load. My grasp of programming is far from wide-reaching, but I've gone so far as to compile a simple program. Please don't laugh within earshot: #include <unistd.h> int main() { int i; for(i=0; i<1000; i++) { usleep(2000); } return 0; } A few results after compiling (-O2 -s) and executing within /usr/bin/ time: inside VMWare-hosted 5-stable host: 0.044u 0.050s 0:19.62 0.4% 53+834k 0+0io 0pf+0w 0.029u 0.054s 0:19.60 0.3% 24+810k 0+0io 0pf+0w 0.036u 0.057s 0:19.60 0.4% 29+973k 0+0io 0pf+0w 0.037u 0.053s 0:19.59 0.4% 32+1072k 0+0io 0pf+0w outside VMWare within 5-stable on same hardware: 0.006u 0.006s 0:19.99 0.0% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w 0.000u 0.012s 0:19.99 0.0% 12+396k 0+0io 0pf+0w 0.002u 0.010s 0:19.99 0.0% 20+660k 0+0io 0pf+0w 0.004u 0.008s 0:19.99 0.0% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w I'm assuming this has something to do with the fact that vmware's concept of time differs from being on the wire, but I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to reduce sleep CPU consumption of software designed around this concept (streaming servers, etc.)? Would this question be better-addressed in another list? Thanks, -Tom