[lug] High load with 'w'

[Jeff Schroeder]

Hello all--

I had a server go haywire for a few minutes, and apparently it started 
having issues delivering web pages.  It's running Apache+PHP+MySQL and 
little else, so the bulk of the load on the server is web requests.

Curious why people couldn't access web pages, I logged in and checked 
the load:

4:48pm  up 79 days,  5:03,  2 users,  load average: 75.87, 76.00, 76.13
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT
root     pts/1    cpe-66-87-136-19  4:48pm  0.00s  0.04s  0.00s  w 

Whoa, a load average of 76?!  That seems impossibly high to me... I've 
had servers get completely hammered and not go above 4 or 5.

Doing a 'ps' showed 87 Apache processes-- well below the maximum number 
allowed by default (200, IIRC).  I stopped and restarted Apache and 
everything cleared up nicely, which makes me think there were some 
zombie processes.  It fixed the problem but didn't solve the puzzle.

In any case, has anyone seen loads like that?  Was it just a fluke with 
the 'w' (and 'top') command, or something I should look into more 
closely?

TIA,
Jeff