Received: from maia.hub.org (unknown [200.46.208.211]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 47940632EFE for ; Wed, 7 Apr 2010 20:48:03 -0300 (ADT) Received: from mail.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.86]) by maia.hub.org (mx1.hub.org [200.46.208.211]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 52393-02 for ; Wed, 7 Apr 2010 23:47:45 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: delayed 00:09:15.78735 by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from crecy.medialogik.com (crecy.medialogik.com [72.51.27.2]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4C05632A45 for ; Wed, 7 Apr 2010 20:47:52 -0300 (ADT) Received: from [192.168.100.101] (S0106000c6eb33e73.vc.shawcable.net [96.49.227.24]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by crecy.medialogik.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 80ED58531 for ; Wed, 7 Apr 2010 16:38:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Alan Hodgson Organization: Reinvent Technology, Inc. To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org Subject: Re: Occasional giant spikes in CPU load Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2010 16:38:27 -0700 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.10 References: <1270679808.19131.28.camel@jd-desktop.unknown.charter.com> <4BBD0DD5.3050807@emolecules.com> In-Reply-To: <4BBD0DD5.3050807@emolecules.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <201004071638.27421@hal.medialogik.com> X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-0.554 tagged_above=-10 required=5 tests=AWL=-0.555, BAYES_50=0.001 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 201004/103 X-Sequence-Number: 38353 On Wednesday 07 April 2010, Craig James wrote: > I thought so too, except that I can't login during the flood. If the > CPUs were all doing iowaits, logging in should be easy. Busying out the drives is about the most reliable way to make logging in very slow (especially, but not only, if it's due to swapping).