I'm using gentoo and anytime I do uptime, my "Load average" is stuck at 7.0 across the board. When using top or htop or dstat the CPU usage is always idle. The computer is used to run a Java program which uses a lot of NIO and java.util.concurrent packages (there could be a lot of spin-locks). Could that drive false load average numbers up? Actually, how does one start debugging this? The computer does not appear to be under any load as its performance is quite normal. Any suggestions?
uptime: " 10:56:50 up 327 days, 21:01, 4 users, load average: 7.00, 7.03, 7.00"
uname -a: "Linux host 2.6.30-gentoo-r6 #1 SMP Tue Oct 6 12:08:22 EDT 2009 i686 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5550 @ 2.67GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux"