Ubuntu

Extremely high load average on 16.04

Asked by Ryan Wright

Sometime in the past month my Ubuntu 16.04 workstation started increasing load average and not stopping. The longer the system is online, the higher the load average. There do not appear to be any pressures on CPU, memory or disk; I have been monitoring these resources carefully.

Here's where I'm at right now:

top - 15:58:43 up 5:02, 1 user, load average: 22.92, 24.30, 25.00
Tasks: 255 total, 1 running, 254 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 29.8 us, 8.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 62.1 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 4044812 total, 240300 free, 2405320 used, 1399192 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 4194300 total, 4188724 free, 5576 used. 1182852 avail Mem

Load average will continue to climb until it is between 200 and 300, at which point the system will become unstable. This will happen within approximately 24 hours of a fresh boot. Generally, by the time load average is much above 20, I become unable to switch users - attempting to do so results in a black screen.

I'm at a loss to explain what is happening. It's worked fine up until recently. I suspect something broke the last time I updated packages. The only applications I'm using are Google Chrome, some terminal sessions, Remmina remote desktop client and Libreoffice Calc.

Thank you for any advice you can offer.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

What is the output of:

top -n 1

Thanks

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Ryan Wright (ryanpwright) said : 		#2

Output of top -n 1:

top - 11:28:09 up 2 days, 31 min, 2 users, load average: 185.37, 184.33, 182.16
Tasks: 500 total, 1 running, 499 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 8.1 us, 2.7 sy, 0.0 ni, 89.0 id, 0.1 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 4044812 total, 120000 free, 3525180 used, 399632 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 4194300 total, 2558508 free, 1635792 used. 118212 avail Mem

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 5441 float 20 0 1370572 189816 87588 S 17.6 4.7 0:39.09 chrome
 8706 float 20 0 42208 3888 3088 R 17.6 0.1 0:00.03 top
 4706 root 20 0 384960 48756 19956 S 11.8 1.2 0:18.03 Xorg
 1947 rwright 20 0 818500 15212 5416 S 5.9 0.4 2:28.33 solaar
 5088 float 20 0 477988 13464 8604 S 5.9 0.3 0:00.26 ibus-ui-gtk3
 7954 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 5.9 0.0 0:02.40 kworker/u8:4
21662 rwright 20 0 3238140 300540 43180 S 5.9 7.4 65:26.79 chrome
    1 root 20 0 119792 4136 2596 S 0.0 0.1 0:23.03 systemd
    2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kthreadd
    3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:09.01 ksoftirqd/0
    5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H
    7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 2:34.34 rcu_sched
    8 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_bh
    9 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 migration/0
   10 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.42 watchdog/0
   11 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.43 watchdog/1
   12 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/1
   13 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:38.74 ksoftirqd/1
   15 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/1:0H
   16 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kdevtmpfs
   17 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
   18 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 perf
   19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.13 khungtaskd
   20 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 writeback
   21 root 25 5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksmd
   22 root 39 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:11.48 khugepaged
   23 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 crypto
   24 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd
   25 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   26 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd
   27 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_sff
   28 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 md
   29 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 devfreq_wq
   31 root 20 0 0 0 0 D 0.0 0.0 5:19.62 kworker/1:1
   33 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:12.87 kswapd0
   34 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 vmstat
   35 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 fsnotify_mark
   36 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ecryptfs-kthrea
   52 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthrotld
   53 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 acpi_thermal_pm
   54 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   55 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   56 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   57 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   58 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   59 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   60 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   61 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bioset
   65 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ipv6_addrconf
   78 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 deferwq
   79 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 charger_manager
  118 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
  119 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_tmf_0
  120 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1
  121 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_tmf_1

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

If you close Chrome, is it any better?

Revision history for this message
Ryan Wright (ryanpwright) said : 		#4

Yes, actually. It took some time, but after closing chrome the load average started dropping. I left it for a few hours, came back and it was down below 10.

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#5

What extensions do you have in Chrome?

Revision history for this message
Ryan Wright (ryanpwright) said : 		#6

I disabled all of them several days ago in an attempt to troubleshoot this issue; it didn't make any difference. I'm not in front of that computer at the moment but I can verify which extensions are actually installed later this evening if you think it would help.

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Ryan Wright (ryanpwright) said : 		#7

OK, I'm back at that computer. All extensions are currently disabled, but here's the list:

Docs
Easy Viewer
Google Docs Offline
Proxy SwitchySharp
Sheets
Slides
Tampermonkey
Video Downloader professional

Thank you for your help!

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#8

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.