(Update posted, see below)
As posted in multiple places around the web:
Debian
/etc/init.d/ntp stop date `date +"%m%d%H%M%C%y.%S"`
Red Hat
/etc/init.d/ntpd stop date `date +"%m%d%H%M%C%y.%S"`
Update:
This first manifested itself for us in our Java stacks — all of our (dual processor) Tomcat servers were running at a load of 30-40. However, this is a known (and fixed) kernel bug:
Apparently, simply forcing a reset of the date is enough to fix the problem:
date -s "`date`"
mjs.fyi 
This post absolutely saved my life. We have tomcat containers and they hit 100% utilization at midnight and never dipped at all. I ran the single “date” command at the bottom of the post and everything immediately corrected. We are now back at under 8% utilization.
Nice job. I hope many others don’t hit their heads against a wall before seeing the post.
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Thanks for this post! Server load dropped to normal levels immediately upon running the date reset command.
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