load=1, cpu 98% idle

[E Frank Ball]

Now and then one of my linux boxes gets it's load stuck at 1 and the box
isn't doing anything.  The CPU is idle.  As you can see from this "top"
output, top is about the only thing using cpu time:

  4:21pm  up 12 days,  4:21,  4 users,  load average: 1.00, 1.03, 1.16
78 processes: 75 sleeping, 3 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  0.9% user,  1.1% system,  0.0% nice, 97.8% idle
Mem:   192760K av,  189416K used,    3344K free,   82512K shrd,   22864K buff
Swap:  409616K av,    2540K used,  407076K free                   71104K cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT  LIB %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
25658 frankb    14   0   884  884   672 R       0  1.7  0.4   0:02 top
25656 frankb     2   0  2156 2156  1588 R       0  0.3  1.1   0:00 xterm
    1 root       0   0   384  376   324 S       0  0.0  0.1   0:26 init
    2 root       0   0     0    0     0 SW      0  0.0  0.0   0:02 kflushd
    3 root       0   0     0    0     0 SW      0  0.0  0.0   0:22 kupdate
    4 root       0   0     0    0     0 SW      0  0.0  0.0   0:00 kpiod
    5 root       0   0     0    0     0 SW      0  0.0  0.0   0:29 kswapd
    6 root     -20 -20     0    0     0 SW<     0  0.0  0.0   0:00 mdrecoveryd
  463 root       0   0   504  500   404 S       0  0.0  0.2  18:31 syslogd
  472 root       0   0   716  712   304 S       0  0.0  0.3   0:00 klogd
  486 daemon     0   0   312  304   232 S       0  0.0  0.1   0:00 atd
  500 root       0   0   568  564   460 S       0  0.0  0.2   0:03 crond
  538 root       0   0   688  688   556 S       0  0.0  0.3   0:10 master
  543 postfix    0   0   836  836   664 S       0  0.0  0.4   0:01 qmgr

Why does it do this?  The machine is responsive, it doesn't act like the
load is 1.  It will stay this way until I reboot it.  It's not a big
problem, it just doesn't seem right.  Doesn't a load=1 mean the cpu is
at 100% by definition?

-- 

   E Frank Ball                frankb at efball.com