[wellylug] CPU load

[Gordon Paynter]

Hi all,

I'm using a single-processor AMD Athlon XP 3200+ machine (remotely via ssh) 
that consistently has a load average of 8 or 10.  Consequently, it is not 
responsive. I regularly work on other, similar machines with no such problem.

The machine doesn't seem to be running more than 1 CPU-intensive task.  If  I 
run top, I can see one process that registers in the %CPU column: it gets 
99.9%, even though it is niced down to 10 (i.e. it is low-priority). MySQL is 
running, and gets hit a bit, and has niceness of -5, but seldom accounts for 
more than 0.1% of CPU.  There is memory available, so I assume no swapping is 
taking place.

Can anyone suggest how I might find out where the CPU cycles are going on this 
machine.  (I have root access.)

Thanks,
Gordon