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I'm running a dedicated m3.medium EC2 instance. How is it possible that my top says:

Tasks:  84 total,   1 running,  83 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  4.3%us,  1.5%sy,  0.0%ni, 90.8%id,  0.1%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  3.2%st
Mem:   3840444k total,  3780152k used,    60292k free,   208224k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,  3040292k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                                                                                                                                                                              
22440 newrelic  20   0  109m 3892 2704 S  4.0  0.1   1:35.23 nrsysmond                                                                                                                                                                                                            
 4715 www-data  20   0 83568 4928 2044 S  2.0  0.1  10:10.62 nginx                                                                                                                                                                                                                
    1 root      20   0 24308 2304 1348 S  0.0  0.1   0:01.39 init                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
    2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd                                                                                                                                                                                                             
    3 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   2:26.52 ksoftirqd/0                                                                                                                                                                                                          
    4 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:0                                                                                                                                                                                                          
    5 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 kworker/u:0                                                                                                                                                                                                          
    6 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0                                                                                                                                                                                                          
    7 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:05.75 watchdog/0                                                                                                                                                                                                           
    8 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuset                                                                                                                                                                                                               
    9 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   10 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kdevtmpfs                                                                                                                                                                                                            
   11 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 netns                                                                                                                                                                                                                
   12 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 xenwatch                                                                                                                                                                                                             
   13 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.07 xenbus                                                                                                                                                                                                               
   14 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.80 sync_supers                                                                                                                                                                                                          
   15 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.73 bdi-default                                                                                                                                                                                                          
   16 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kintegrityd                                                                                                                                                                                                          
   17 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   18 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ata_sff                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   19 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd                                                                                                                                                                                                                
   20 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 md                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
   21 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:36.58 kworker/0:1                                                                                                                                                                                                          
   23 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/u:1                                                                                                                                                                                                          
   24 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.16 khungtaskd                                                                                                                                                                                                           
   25 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:04.74 kswapd0                                                                                                                                                                                                              
   26 root      25   5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksmd                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
   27 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 fsnotify_mark                                                                                                                                                                                                        
   28 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ecryptfs-kthrea                                                                                                                                                                                                      
   29 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 crypto                                                                                                                                                                                                               
   37 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthrotld                                                                                                                                                                                                             
   38 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khvcd                                                                                                                                                                                                                
   57 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 devfreq_wq                                                                                                                                                                                                           
  180 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:30.38 jbd2/xvda1-8                                                                                                                                                                                                         
  181 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ext4-dio-unwrit                                                                                                                                                                                                      
  280 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kjournald                                                                                                                                                                                                            
  295 root      20   0 17232  636  448 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.07 upstart-udev-br                                                                                                                                                                                                      
  297 root      20   0 21468 1268  792 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 udevd                                                                                                                                                                                                                
  346 root      20   0 21464  768  360 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 udevd                                                                                                                                                                                                                
  347 root      20   0 21464  792  380 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 udevd                                                                                                                                                                                                                
  444 root      20   0 15188  396  204 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 upstart-socket-                                                                                                                                                                                                      
  458 root      20   0 19200 1064  788 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.73 rpcbind                                                                                                                                                                                                              
  501 root      20   0  7264 1032  532 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.00 dhclient3                                                                                                                                                                                                            
  581 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:17.81 flush-202:1                                                                                                                                                                                                          
  787 root      20   0 50036 2932 2320 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.02 sshd                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
  789 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rpciod                                                                                                                                                                                                               
  802 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 nfsiod                                                                                                                                                                                                               
  811 statd     20   0 21504 1348  892 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rpc.statd                                                                                                                                                                                                            
  816 syslog    20   0  247m 1524 1108 S  0.0  0.0   2:37.38 rsyslogd                                                                                                                                                                                                             
  825 messageb  20   0 23816  924  644 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 dbus-daemon                                                                                                                                                                                                          
  830 root      20   0 29780  716  448 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rpc.idmapd                                                                                                                                                                                                           
  889 root      20   0 14504  980  812 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 getty                                                                                                                                                                                                                
  895 root      20   0 14504  968  812 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty                                                                                                                                                                                                                
  900 root      20   0 14504  964  812 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty                                                                                                                                                                                                                
  901 root      20   0 14504  976  812 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty                                                                                                                                                                                                                
  903 root      20   0 14504  972  812 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 getty                                                                                                                                                                                                                
  909 root      20   0 19112 1052  804 S  0.0  0.0   0:02.46 cron                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
  910 daemon    20   0 16908  376  216 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 atd

If I'm the only one on the box, who's stealing my CPU?

4
  • Probably one of the other instances you're running on the box, or the hypervisor itself. Nov 19, 2014 at 0:34
  • TessellatingHeckler I know what st is. I dont understand how it could be present on a machine with one VM. While I understand there may be some administrative cycles used by the hypervisor, at what point would this be considered excessive? Nov 19, 2014 at 1:22
  • Michael Hampton as far as I know, I'm the only instance on the box. Does AWS group other instances in my account marked as "dedicated" on the same physical machine? While 3.2% is small in this example, I've had other examples where stolen is +20% and the machine is dedicated. I only posted this full example to tame yoonix's flame. Nov 19, 2014 at 1:24

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