misleading load average

[Richard Johnsson]

I have a VAX 785 running Ultrix 1.1 which has been reporting a load average
just over 3 all night although there is apparently nothing going on (ps
shows nothing running except itself; mon reports no processes in the run
queues and over 90% idle time).  I believe I have also seen this on 4.2
sytems here.

Can anyone explain or provide a fix?
-- 
	Richard Johnsson, DEC Western Software Lab, Palo Alto, CA
	UUCP:  {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!johnsson
        ARPA:  johnsson at decwrl.dec.com     DEC ENet: rhea::johnsson