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

Hi folks,

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:

(from top)
top - 11:47:24 up 19:19, 1 user, load average: 127.30, 126.59, 124.14
Tasks: 362 total, 2 running, 360 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.0% us, 0.2% sy, 0.0% ni, 98.5% id, 0.3% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 499648k total, 489568k used, 10080k free, 21220k buffers
Swap: 1502068k total, 88k used, 1501980k free, 159440k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND

15560 thorin 15 0 6204 2444 1760 R 1.9 0.5 0:00.03 top

1 root 16 0 1564 528 460 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.20 init

2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
migration/0
3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
ksoftirqd/0
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0

5 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.10 events/0

6 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 khelper

7 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread

9 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0

10 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid

127 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 pdflush

128 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush

The output from dmesg doesn't show any hardware faults or time-outs:
dmesg | tail
[42949392.820000] md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
[42949392.820000] md: bitmap version 4.39
[42949393.200000] device-mapper: 4.4.0-ioctl (2005-01-12) initialised:
dm-devel@xxxxxxxxxx
[42949396.240000] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
[42949396.240000] EXT3 FS on hda1, internal journal
[42949396.240000] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
[42949402.240000] eth1: no IPv6 routers present
[42949413.210000] Netfilter messages via NETLINK v0.30.
[42949413.250000] ip_conntrack version 2.4 (3967 buckets, 31736 max) -
232 bytes per conntrack
[42949413.660000] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team

In fact, the system seems to be fine... except that uptime and top and
/proc/loadavg all show a load average that would kill a 16-way monster.

What can I do to diagnose this further? How do I find out what's causing
it? What does it mean? Help!

Please note:
I just recently got my server hosted, and chose to stick with Ubuntu
because that's what I know. This is relevant because it's very primitive
hosting: Please don't suggest any strategy that involves having physical
access to the machine, booting special media, or performing operations
that can only be done on the console. I have a total of three kinds of
access to this box:
1. I can get in over the network, e.g. by ssh.
2. I can have the system rebooted (for a sum of money per reboot).
3. I can get the system reinstalled from scratch.
This last option is presently kinda less than ideal, since I don't have
a current backup.

Thanks in advance!

--
Thorne Huw Lawler trouble.net.au
"Croup and Vandermar, the Old Firm. Obstacles
obliterated, nuisances eradicated, bothersome
limbs removed and tutelary dentistry undertaken"

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