/proc/loadavg disagrees with top and ps

[Reid Priedhorsky <reid@reidster.net>]

Hello everyone,

/proc/loadavg currently reports the following:

  0.96 0.98 0.78 1/116 23994

xload also reports roughly the same.

But top and ps both report a nearly idle system (98% idle). What is going
on? How can I find out what is causing my system to be so busy?

This is kernel 2.4.26.

I am pretty sure I haven't been hacked, as chkrootkit and rkhunter both
report nothing.

This happened a few weeks ago. Even stopping X didn't help. I got so
frustrated that I rebooted, which solved the problem until now.

Thanks,

Reid