100-200 load average on an idle system: Help!

[Peter Garrett]

On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:58:02 +1100
Thorne Lawler <thorin at trouble.net.au> wrote:

> My Ubuntu Dapper (6.06.1) box is consistently showing a load average of 
> 100+ while completely idle, not swapping, and not particularly using its 
> disks:

I'm not quite clear on this - is this a box you administer remotely, from
a provider?

If so, I wonder if the provider is using virtualisation/paravirtualisation
to run a bunch of servers on one box. For example, if it is running
V-server then all the virtual servers run from one kernel, if I understand
the principle.

Just a guess, really... I could be way off track, as I know very little
about how loads show up in such systems.

Peter