Question

Process kswapd0 triggers 100% CPU usage

Posted on April 1, 2020
Ubuntu 18.04 Docker
Asked by Willy Pregliasco

Hi,

I installed the Docker Droplet of DO and loaded a modest docker-compose service. After a week of working ok and uninterrupted for 8 days.

Suddenly cpu fired up to 100% usage and I couldnt access the droplet. After reboot and password reset, I launched the process again and the same happed in a couple of hours.

The second time, I could enter to the droplet and doesn’t seems to be a hack on the machine. The process using the cpu was the kswapd0 and this is a known issue with the memory swap management but not very clearly solved in Ubuntu machines.

Furthermore, this is not really a machine, and I don’t know (and probably I don’t need to know) how is configured.

As this maybe is an trouble shared with other users I ask for some recommendation. Thanks in advance, Willy Pregliasco

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Willy Pregliasco • April 3, 2020

Accepted Answer

Just for the record: finally I the rebuild the project with the new swap configuration and everything it is going smoothing and with a 0.65% of CPU.

I learned that when the project runs low in memory, the operatives system can get corrupted and a fresh new start is a good advice.

Thanks for the help. See you in next troubleshot !

Willy

Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• April 1, 2020

Hi there @willypregliasco,

It sounds like that you might not have enough RAM and the processes are moved to SWAP too frequently which could cause the high CPU load.

There are a few options that you can configure that will have an impact on your system’s performance when dealing with swap.

What I could suggest is tweaking your SWAP settings as described in this tutorial here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap-space-on-ubuntu-16-04#tweak-your-swap-settings

Let me know how it goes!

If you are still facing the problem, can you share how much RAM you and how much SWAP space you’ve got as well? You can do that with this command here: