CPU Steal — Noisy Neighbour

Diagnose high CPU steal time and escalate correctly to the cloud provider.

A advanced Linux challenge worth 20 points. Solve it hands-on in a real Linux environment in your browser - no local setup, no fake shells.

The Challenge

top shows %st consistently above 30%. The API is 3x slower than baseline. CPU steal is a hypervisor-level issue — it cannot be fixed with Linux tuning.

Your tasks:

• Confirm steal time: vmstat 1 5 (note the st column)
• Read the simulated steal report: cat /var/log/steal_metrics.log
• Rule out local processes: top -bn1 | head -20
• Identify VM type: cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -m1 "model name"
• Write to /tmp/steal_report.txt:

STEAL_AVG: <percent from steal_metrics.log> LOCAL_PROCESS_CAUSE: no CONCLUSION: hypervisor resource contention RECOMMENDED_ACTION: request instance resize or live migration from cloud provider

• Run check to validate