Unusual load problem

[thehemi]

I have a RHEL 3 server with an unusual load problem. In the past, the load on the server has remained relatively stable under 1. Ever since last week, the server runs ok and has spikes, maybe every 8-10 minutes, with loads upto 8, rendering the server almost useless. However, checking sar statistics, the CPUs never show more than 4% used. The RAID set is good, there's no bad drives, so it's not chugging along due to any RAID failure. I can watch top, but I never see anything really changing? No new/weird processes running. Nothing taking much more than 0.2% CPU at any one time. How the heck can I troubleshoot this further? Thanks!

[thehemi]

I was just breaking a load of 6 and was watching iostat at the time. I don't see any high level of disk usage, most of the numbers remained 0 or nearly 0. I'm assuming that disk utilization is not causing my load issues. Both of my DNS servers are good and replying rapidly to queries.

[thehemi]

Actually one of my Windows domain controllers was removed from the network and some of the DNS entries were not updated on the public network. So I made the appropriate changes in DNS and restarted Samba, so maybe that's my problem. I will know after a few monitoring polling cycles.

[thehemi]

This is what happens to the load when a Samba server joined
to a Windows domain loses touch w/ the domain controller.

[likwid]

Nice dude.