The following is the top output from a IBM eServer 325 running on a
AMD Opteron Server. The Server is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.
The server came loaded with 3GB of RAM and upon constant analysis I
found that it using less than 1GB of RAM while it shows a iowait of
94%. Kindly let me know how to resolve the issue.

08:07:30 up 1 day, 17:03, 1 user, load average: 4.46, 3.45, 3.63
189 processes: 187 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: cpu user nice system irq softirq iowait
idle
total 2.5% 0.0% 2.9% 0.0% 0.3% 94.0%
0.0%
Mem: 3094216k av, 768436k used, 2325780k free, 0k shrd,
160108k buff
322528k active, 102208k inactive
Swap: 6289408k av, 0k used, 6289408k free
143228k cached


And I also noticed a couple of errors as shown below in the dmesg
output

IO APIC #2......
..... register #00: 02000000
........ : physical APIC id: 02
........ : Delivery Type: 0
........ : LTS : 0
..... register #01: 00030011
........ : max redirection entries: 0003
An unexpected IO-APIC was found. If this kernel release is less than
three months old please report this to linux-smp@vger.kernel.org
........ : PRQ implemented: 0
........ : IO APIC version: 0011
..... register #02: 00000000
........ : arbitration: 00
..... IRQ redirection table:
NR Log Phy Mask Trig IRR Pol Stat Dest Deli Vect:
00 001 01 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 B9
01 001 01 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 C1
02 001 01 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 C9
03 000 00 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 00

IO APIC #3......
..... register #00: 03000000
........ : physical APIC id: 03
........ : Delivery Type: 0
........ : LTS : 0
..... register #01: 00030011
........ : max redirection entries: 0003
An unexpected IO-APIC was found. If this kernel release is less than
three months old please report this to linux-smp@vger.kernel.org
........ : PRQ implemented: 0
........ : IO APIC version: 0011
..... register #02: 00000000
........ : arbitration: 00
..... IRQ redirection table:
NR Log Phy Mask Trig IRR Pol Stat Dest Deli Vect:
00 000 00 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 00
01 000 00 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 00
02 000 00 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 00
03 000 00 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 00

[ Followup-To --> comp.os.linux.redhat,comp.os.linux.setup ]

In comp.os.linux.setup Samuel Victor <samvictorin@yahoo.com>:
> The following is the top output from a IBM eServer 325 running on a
> AMD Opteron Server. The Server is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.
> The server came loaded with 3GB of RAM and upon constant analysis I
> found that it using less than 1GB of RAM while it shows a iowait of
> 94%. Kindly let me know how to resolve the issue.

First of, are you running the latest patches + update kernel
available from rhn? 'uname -r' should tell concerning the kernel.

> 08:07:30 up 1 day, 17:03, 1 user, load average: 4.46, 3.45, 3.63
> 189 processes: 187 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
> CPU states: cpu user nice system irq softirq iowait
> idle
> total 2.5% 0.0% 2.9% 0.0% 0.3% 94.0%
> 0.0%

Might be just one or another cron/anacron job left over, updatedb
or so, perhaps stuck on a nfs mount? Check what processes 'ps
faux' are most likely for the problem.

> And I also noticed a couple of errors as shown below in the dmesg
> output.

Again, there have been numerous kernel updates for RHEL 3.0, the
problem you are seeing might be resolved some time ago, but alas
without knowing 'uname -r' your kernel version, hard to tell.

BTW
Please don't post a problem completely unrelated to sendmail, to
the sendmail ng, thx.

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry@urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 288: Hard drive sleeping. Let it wake up on
it's own...

Samuel Victor wrote:
> The following is the top output from a IBM eServer 325 running on a
> AMD Opteron Server. The Server is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.
> The server came loaded with 3GB of RAM and upon constant analysis I
> found that it using less than 1GB of RAM while it shows a iowait of
> 94%. Kindly let me know how to resolve the issue.

How about telling us what issue you're trying to resolve... You have
excess memory, excess CPU, and your i/o system is heavily loaded. If you
want a quick fix, dowload setiathome and run that, it will use up the
CPU and memory, and the waitio will go away.

On the other hand, if you want more useful advice, how about a more
useful question? What application are you running, and is it actually
performing poorly, or what? What kernel, what distro, what disk and
network hardware?

--
-bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
last possible moment - but no longer" -me