Artificially high load average

[Jonathan Biggar]

I have a network of 8 SparcStation-1 and 1+ workstations, all running 4.1,
and all have their own local disk for swap space.  One of the
Sparcstations is the fileserver for /usr and /home for the entire group.
On the fileserver, I have noticed that even when the entire network is
idle, I often see the load average sit at a very constant level of 3 or 4.
I have watched the ethernet and I don't see any traffic which could cause
this, and top reports that only one process is in the running state at any
time, and the system is running at 98-99% idle.

Has anyone seen this situation?

Jon Biggar
jon at netlabs.com