Strange Load Average patterns

["Rudolph van Graan" <rvg@ifoni.com>]

Hi again,

I'm struggling trying to get to the root of a possible problem with
woody or the kernel. One of my up to date production machines show a
very strange load average problem. Basically, the machine gradually
builds up to a high LA and then abruptly at 6:30 in the morning this
stops. It then builds up again, peaking just before 6:30 the next
morning. I've done all sorts of traces - most of them using top that
didn't show anything out of the ordinary. I've suspected that the
machine might be hacked, but scanning through all of the processes in
/proc, again nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing that I know is
that sysklogd restarts about that time in the morning. I've checked and
checked, and it definitely is not one of the user mode processes causing
this.

uname -a:

Linux newton 2.2.20 #1 Sat Apr 20 11:45:28 EST 2002 i686 unknown

$> dpkg --list | grep sysklog
ii  sysklogd       1.4.1-10       System Logging Daemon

Any ideas?

Regards,

Rudolph van Graan