loop0 command eating 100% of the CPU

Question

Today I noticed that my server was becoming very slow. I checked it thru top command, and I got:

top - 21:49:32 up 25 days,  9:13,  1 user,  load average: 1238.23, 825.34, 502.3
Tasks: 1815 total, 145 running, 1666 sleeping,   0 stopped,   4 zombie
Cpu(s):  1.3%us, 98.0%sy,  0.0%ni,  0.0%id,  0.4%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.4%si,  0.0%st
Mem:  12290984k total, 12252988k used,    37996k free,    30756k buffers
Swap:  1052248k total,   428116k used,   624132k free,   981528k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND            
 3129 root       5 -20     0    0    0 R 77.8  0.0  34:10.25 loop0              
 2281 nobody    18   0  163m  11m 3128 R 55.6  0.1   0:02.93 httpd              
 2021 nobody    19   0  162m  11m 3552 R 44.9  0.1   0:03.07 httpd              
  561 nobody    18   0  163m  11m 3172 R 44.4  0.1   0:02.03 httpd              
 2085 nobody    17   0  163m  11m 3176 R 41.4  0.1   0:03.22 httpd              
 1116 nobody    18   0  162m  11m 3168 R 37.2  0.1   0:02.38 httpd              
31809 nobody    18   0  163m  12m 3500 R 36.2  0.1   0:02.10 httpd              
 1906 nobody    17   0  161m 9364 1936 R 35.7  0.1   0:13.15 httpd              
31979 nobody    17   0  162m  11m 3404 R 30.7  0.1   0:04.41 httpd              
32610 nobody    18   0  161m 9688 2344 R 29.9  0.1   0:11.07 httpd              
 2326 nobody    17   0  162m  11m 3428 R 28.7  0.1   0:02.18 httpd              
  565 root      20  -5     0    0    0 R 27.4  0.0   4:29.02 kswapd0            
 2183 nobody    19   0  162m  11m 3100 R 26.4  0.1   0:02.55 httpd              
 1998 nobody    17   0  162m  10m 2484 R 24.7  0.1   0:10.76 httpd              
28515 nobody    16   0  169m  16m 5416 R 23.4  0.1   0:02.75 httpd              
 2056 nobody    19   0  166m  14m 5776 R 22.2  0.1   0:02.95 httpd              
32379 nobody    16   0  164m  12m 4376 R 20.7  0.1   0:01.52 httpd 

Id like to know what is wrong. I think it's related to the /tmp directory

root@server [~]# mount
/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw,usrquota)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
/usr/tmpDSK on /tmp type ext3 (rw,noexec,nosuid,loop=/dev/loop0)
/tmp on /var/tmp type none (rw,noexec,nosuid,bind)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)


root@server [~]# losetup -a
/dev/loop0: [0802]:103095300 (/usr/tmpDSK)

Answer 1

you have an excessive number of tasks running, This isn't just a loop back device issue. You need to stream line your setup to the load you demand from it. You have 4 zombie processes in a matter of 25 days... thats not healthy.