High load average

[angelb]

One of our CUPS server's load average is much higher than normal and it has spiked
early today when one printer was acting up. The load average has never gone down even
when the printer issue was resolved.

Looking at our Cricket graph, the load average spiked to 1.2 at the first sign of
printer problem:

# grep -i commptr error_log|more
I [08/Jul/2008:10:16:14 -0500] commptr=""	<------ time coincide with Cricket load avg spike
I [08/Jul/2008:10:16:21 -0500] commptr="?QUERY=ck1r&x=32&y=7"
I [08/Jul/2008:10:16:40 -0500] commptr="?QUERY=ck1r&x=22&y=10"
I [08/Jul/2008:10:22:28 -0500] commptr=""
....
I [08/Jul/2008:15:54:14 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:54:25 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:54:35 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:54:46 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:54:56 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:55:07 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:55:18 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:55:28 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:55:39 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:55:49 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:56:00 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:56:11 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:56:21 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:56:32 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:56:42 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:56:53 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:57:04 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:57:14 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:57:25 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:57:35 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:57:46 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:57:56 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:58:07 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:58:18 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:58:28 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:58:39 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:58:49 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:59:00 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:59:10 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:59:21 -0500] commptr=""
I [08/Jul/2008:15:59:32 -0500] commptr=""

What's with all the commptr= ?  It seems to appear every 9-10 seconds. I'm not sure if it has anything
to do with the high cpu use but I thought I'd show it since it seems suspicious.  This is not happening
on the partner server.

# uptime
 16:41:28 up 39 days, 21:57,  1 user,  load average: 1.26, 1.21, 1.13

# top
top - 16:47:59 up 39 days, 22:03,  1 user,  load average: 1.37, 1.25, 1.17
Tasks: 106 total,   2 running, 104 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.7% us, 99.3% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:   1035792k total,   299056k used,   736736k free,    24472k buffers
Swap:  1048568k total,      144k used,  1048424k free,   164740k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 1969 root      25   0 32144  26m 1816 R 99.3  2.6   1788:34 cupsd
24485 root      17   0  2056  968  760 R  0.7  0.1   0:00.04 top
    1 root      16   0  2332  624  540 S  0.0  0.1   1:10.68 init


This has happened in the past(this is the fourth time now) where CUPS get spooked,
its load average goes up and it never comes down.

Has anyone seen this before and corrected it?

The partner server, serving the same printer queues, is running normally.
# uptime
 16:42:46 up 39 days, 21:54,  1 user,  load average: 0.09, 0.14, 0.10


Thanks,
Angel