Not really sure what the mechanism involved is, here, but let me tell you a recent experience.
I’ve had my desktop’s load up around 1.5-2 (or higher) for the past little while. Couldn’t figure out what it was all about.
Today I removed all the old kernels and kernel restricted modules from prior days — this includes 386 kernels which my system inexplicably has wanted to download and use in precedence to -generic.
Right now I am down to 3 installed kernels, all of the -generic variety. My load is now 0.2 – 0.5. I’m not sure if something was screwed up and I was using 386-specific modules even though I selected image-generic or what… All I know is that’s the only thing that changed between two ‘uptime’ readings.
So take that for what you will.
