Hosting Question

[xxxcoupon]

Is this normal for CPU usage on a VPS that has two small (wp) sites on it?

[signupdamnit]

No. What kind of cpu do you have there?

Check 'top' and look to see which processes are using the cpu. Check especially the "Nice" processes which I think should have a nonzero value under the "NI" column. There is something strange there and that looks to be using most of your cpu. It's "nice" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_%28Unix%29 ) but even so if you don't know what it is then it might be a problem.

[xxxcoupon]

Do you know the command to see what is running "nice"

$ top

last pid: 86695; load averages: 1.07, 1.06, 1.05 up 43+08:26:19 20:08:19
4 processes: 1 running, 1 sleeping, 2 stopped
CPU: 2.3% user,
77.8% nice,
19.2% system,
0.8% interrupt,
0.0% idle
Mem: 108M Active, 104M Inact, 132M Wired, 22M Cache, 60M Buf, 118M Free
Swap: 1001M Total, 115M Used, 886M Free, 11% Inuse

[signupdamnit]

When you run 'top' It should show a bunch of header information as you typed but then also a bunch of processes under that and this should update every second or two.. There should be a column labeled "NI". On one of my servers it is between "PR" and "VIRT". Check that column for anything with other than a "0" value. Those are the "nice" processes. A positive value means lower priority whereas a negative value means higher priority. By default most processes are usually at the "0" priority.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_%28software%29

[xxxcoupon]

$ top

last pid: 95444; load averages: 0.98, 0.95, 0.96 up 43+08:36:06 20:18:06
6 processes: 1 running, 1 sleeping, 4 stopped
CPU: 0.4% user, 75.7% nice, 24.0% system, 0.0% interrupt, 0.0% idle
Mem: 121M Active, 113M Inact, 135M Wired, 21M Cache, 60M Buf, 95M Free
Swap: 1001M Total, 115M Used, 886M Free, 11% Inuse

PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND
84354 me 1 8 0 7064K 1808K wait 0:00 0.00% sh
94340 me 1 44 0 8116K 1616K STOP 0:00 0.00% top
84837 me 1 44 0 8116K 1616K STOP 0:00 0.00% top
85815 me 1 44 0 8116K 1616K STOP 0:00 0.00% top
86522 me 1 44 0 8116K 1616K STOP 0:00 0.00% top
95258 me 1 44 0 8116K 1620K RUN 0:00 0.00% top

[signupdamnit]

Weird. None of those are the culprit although I don't know why you have so many 'top' instances. Try 'ps aux' which will show all processes. You can pipe it with 'ps aux | less' and this will let you move forward a page with <space> or back a page by hitting 'b'. See what you can find that is running.