Re: excessive CPU usage

[Håkon Alstadheim <hakon@alstadheim.priv.no>]

On 21. sep. 2014 20:54, Gary Roach wrote:
> Hi all
>
> For the last few months I have been plagued by very slow response from 
> my system.
...
> at least one of the processors goes to 100% and stays there for long 
> periods 
...
> no noticeable activity in the process tables.
...
> hard drive indicator comes on and stays on

Are your drives healthy?
What is then number in front of "wa" in the "top" output?
Are you running smartd/smartmontools?

If you are running a raid setup with redundancy, you should shorten the 
error-timeouts on your drives to 7 seconds, with "smartctl -l scterc,70,70".
If you are not running a raid level > 0, go buy a mirror drive stat.