[squid-users] CPU spikes/extreme machine load??

Dear listmember,

Ive got a squid 2.5 running on a solaris 8 box with smb authentication to a
windows 2k domain. The machine got 512MB ram, SCSI raid 1 of 15 GB.
Squid cache_size is set to 2 GB, cache_mem to 96 MB. "top" says, squid
is using around 200 MB of ram. The rest is assigned to squidguard and its
helpers (8) and smb_auth and its helpers (8).

Everything is running happily. But serveral times a day the machine load
peaks out from 0.5 up to 3.50. The box is nearly standing still, no more
responses, no traffic. After a while it is coming down to its normal load
and everything is again working well.

cachmgr says, that there are around 100 requests per minute, which
doesnt seem to much in my opinion for this machine. I tried and switched
half_closed_client off but it had no noticable effect. The high-load is
reproducable
by visiting sites which take very long to load.

If I should make a guess, I would say squid is waiting for the site to load.
But why is this causing such a high load? But it is a guess only.

Is there a way how I could determine what is causing squid to push
the machine load that high?

Thanks alot in advance!

Regards.

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