I don't see the behaviour you noted with the proc going up to 100% utilized.

Well, he did say that he saw 1 processor being used on a 4 processor system. It did bump up to 24% at one point. The fact that vmstat doesn't show CPU pegged at 25% is a good thing though. This doesn't seem to be CPU or IO bound...

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";