CPU 100% idle but still showing load average
Load average doesn't mean what you think it means. It's not about instant CPU usage, but rather how many processes are waiting to run. Usually that's because of lots of things wanting CPU, but not always. A common culprit is a process waiting for IO - disk or network.
Try running ps -e v
and looking for process state flags.
state The state is given by a sequence of characters, for example, "RWNA". The first character indicates the run state of the process:
D Marks a process in disk (or other short term, uninterruptible) wait.
I Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds).
L Marks a process that is waiting to acquire a lock.
R Marks a runnable process.
S Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds.
T Marks a stopped process.
W Marks an idle interrupt thread.
Z Marks a dead process (a "zombie").
This is from the ps
manpage, so you an find more detail there - R
and D
processes are probably of particular interest.
Your top output contains:
Tasks: 534 total, 1 running, 533 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
That 1 running process is the cause of your load average. Find it, and figure out what it's up to. (Edit: As mentioned in comments - that running
process is probably top
. So ignore that)