Understanding what's causing load/CPU spike

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

Hi,

I use MusicOnHold + Realtime extensively with Asterisk. Since I am using realtime once a class is added it stays in memory until I un-regiser the MOH class. To do this I added to the dialplan a script that checks if there is anyone else listening to this class. If they are not it connects to the Asterisk CLI and unregsiterd the class. In my Dialplan I have
System(/opt/dovid/radio/check_moh_class.sh ${MOH_ID}&)
The script has in it

CALLS=$(/usr/sbin/asterisk -rx'core show channels concise' | grep WaitDigit | grep moh_$1 |wc -l)
if [ "$CALLS" -eq "0" ]; then
asterisk -rx"moh unregister class $1"
exit;
fi

I have been having random CPU and load spikes on my boxes and I was never able to figure out why. Today I was manually hanging up on a bunch of calls (about 75 calls) and this was invoked once per call. The audio quality became horrible and I saw that the load and CPU usage spiked. I did this test a few time and every time I got the same result. I have since changed over to a script that connects via the AMI and checks every 60 sesconds all calls and see’s if there are any classes that can be unregistered.

I am writing this question more to understand what I was doing that was causing Asterisk to spike the load on the box so I can further learn.

2

Is Asterisk showing high CPU usage or is the system overall showing high CPU usage? What does ‘top’ show during this high CPU time?

3

what type music on hold are using ?

I solved this kind of issue by moving to playlist

4

When the hangups are happening the load goes up as well as the CPU usage.

5

I am playing online media streams like from shoutcast servers.

6

if you are using the custom type that is a known issue.

(the reason i do not know the symptom is the described.)

try the new type playlist

in the file you could set to a url for streaming i think

it should work better to my experience

7

Any idea what the issue is or how the symptoms are described?