/sbin/init pushes server load up

[Mick]

Hello.

An unusual problem this.  We have three Dell Poweredge 2550 servers and 
one IBM e-serve xSeries 330 and all of them initially had Red Hat ES4 
update 3 installed on them except for the IBM which initially had ES4 
update 2 installed on it after which it was later upgraded to ES4 update 3.

Recently, all four of these servers (all dual CPU machines) were 
upgraded to ES4 update 4. Now, all of the servers are fine - except for 
one of the Dells.  Basically what happens is that over the space of a 
few days, the server load on the problematic Dell steadily and gradually 
increases.  However, running top reveals that no one process is using 
very much CPU time at all and the total of all the CPU times amounts to 
a small fraction also.  Nevertheless, both CPUs are showing 
approximately 50% user and 50% system and comparing top on this machine 
with any one of the other three machines, it can be seen that while init 
on one of the other machines shows for example, CPU time of 1:35.66 with 
a cumulative time of 10518.49 (this is for an uptime of 17 days) and 0% 
CPU , CPU time for init on the the problematic Dell just keeps on 
increasing and it is currently showing 48:24.93 with a cumulative time 
of 3709:02 (for an uptime of 1 day) and continuously consumes 2%-3% CPU.

So how can I fix this? :)

Cheers.