I have a server running CentOS Linux, and very rarely (maybe once every 3 months) something happens that causes it to have an exceptionally high CPU load (400%) that causes the server to basically freeze up.
The problem I have is that when I reboot the server, I can't figure out what caused the spike. I tried setting up a cron job to occasionally dump to a log file the top 10 CPU processes, but when the CPU load is high the cron job apparently won't run either.
I'm sort of new to running a server, so I'm hoping you guys might have some advice on how I could better log the processes and figure out what's causing the sudden spike the next time it happens. I'm sure it's just a script or process that goes out of control, but until I can figure out which one it is I'm sort of at a loss…
Thanks for any help you can provide!
Best Answer
How often did you run that logging cronjob? Maybe you should run it more often, because CPU usage doesn't peak instantly, you have to see an increase somewhere. Alternatively, you could use atop to monitor resource load (including CPU load) overtime.