[chef] easy_install provider intermittent 100% CPU during chef-client run

["Jason J. W. Williams" < >]

A couple times a day we've been receiving 100% CPU warnings on two
servers running the Chef client. When we correlate the time stamps, it
always overlays with the chef-client runs on those servers, in
particular this easy_install_package resource:

%w{MySQL-python}.each do |pkg|
  easy_install_package pkg do
    action :install
  end
end

During the problematic runs, that resource takes 18-20 seconds to run
according to the log timestamps. However, if we run chef-client
manually that resource only takes 1 second or less to run. Everytime
we get the CPU warning it correlates to that resource without fail so
we're a bit baffled why it is intermittently pegging the CPU. Has
anyone else seen this with the easy_install_package resource? Any help
is greatly appreciated.

-J