high "Load Average"

[Cliff Wells]

On Fri, 2010-03-12 at 12:34 -0500, Sessna wrote:
> I am using nginx + php-fpm (quad-core PC) + MySQL (on another PC) and
> facing an interesting issue:
> after some time nginx is running, system "load average" goes up
> (sometimes up to 30 and even more points) while CPU usage is still
> less then 30% With such a high load system becomes very slow and
> unresponsive. Restarting nginx helps, but only for a little while. Any
> ideas on the matter?


You fail to mention what sort of disk subsystem you are using.   High
load is often indicative of I/O bottlenecks.   You also don't mention
what OS you are using, but if it's Linux you should install iotop and
take a look at what process is driving the load (it might be Nginx, but
more likely MySQL - restarting Nginx simply cancels whatever pending
requests MySQL had is my guess).

Cliff