Hi:
For the last couple of hours the server seems to be lagging. Running top shows load average at a tolerable 1-2, but idle is always at 0.0. Can anyone shed some possibilities on how idle can be stuck at 0, or anything else wrong with the picture below? Load average for this server is usually in the low 0.3 to 0.4s, FYI.

9:18pm up 1 day, 22:16, 1 user, load average: 1.91, 1.71, 1.88
101 processes: 91 sleeping, 7 running, 3 zombie, 0 stopped
9:35pm up 1 day, 22:33, 1 user, load average: 1.38, 1.08, 1.18
79 processes: 78 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 44.2% user, 55.7% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle
Mem: 524288K av, 91060K used, 433228K free, 17332K shrd, 0K buff
Swap: 262144K av, 0K used, 262144K free 48948K cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
14775 root 13 0 1004 1004 756 R 2.1 0.1 0:01 top
4406 apache 1 0 9364 9364 8920 S 0.1 1.7 0:01 httpd
10638 apache 10 0 9360 9360 8916 S 0.1 1.7 0:00 httpd
13991 apache 6 0 9368 9368 8948 S 0.1 1.7 0:00 httpd
14821 apache 4 0 9348 9348 8980 S 0.1 1.7 0:00 httpd
1 root 0 0 524 524 456 S 0.0 0.0 0:01 init
1612 root 0 0 592 592 488 S 0.0 0.1 0:08 syslogd
1625 root 0 0 476 476 408 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 klogd
1662 root 0 0 2316 2316 1460 S 0.0 0.4 0:01 snmpd
1693 named 0 0 2468 2468 1860 S 0.0 0.4 0:00 named
1695 named 0 0 2468 2468 1860 S 0.0 0.4 0:01 named
1697 named 0 0 2468 2468 1860 S 0.0 0.4 0:00 named
1698 named 0 0 2468 2468 1860 S 0.0 0.4 0:00 named
1700 named 0 0 2468 2468 1860 S 0.0 0.4 0:00 named
1707 root 0 0 1296 1296 1160 S 0.0 0.2 0:00 sshd
1718 root 0 0 1248 1248 1044 S 0.0 0.2 0:00 sshd
1735 root 0 0 1004 1004 808 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 xinetd

Thanks,

One possibility is that it may suggest that you have a rootkit on your server (it has been hacked) and it has hidden processes and/or installed an infected top command.

Try getting top (ps, ls, netstat, etc...) either from source or another server on the same O/S and version and see if running them show the same output as your installed copies. If it does it may be something else.

Oh, and install and run chkrootkit on the server too:
http://www.chkrootkit.com

Hi:
Thanks. I just tried verifying rootkit on my server by typing the following commands to see if they're valid:

ls -/
du -/
ps -/
netstat -/

The -/ is supposed to detect is rootkit is installed if the option is valid per this article: http://www.cs.wright.edu/people/faculty/pmateti/Courses/499/Fortification/obrien.html

Non returned valid, so does that mean the server's clean?

Thanks,

vmstat 5

The first 2 values is how it calculates load avg. I suggest you read the man page so you know what all of them mean.