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I would ask them whether there is some misfire going on in their systems' configuration which is causing the mt*.cgi scripts to choke/churn more than usual. Or to at least diagnose what might be causing the problem. And if the problem is unavoidable, then see if they can simply throttle the execution of your scripts to keep your site running, yet obviously not at the expense of others' on the system.

(Note: I'm not actually a sys admin myself, but I've hung out with a lot with people who are... and from what I gather I think these are reasonable questions to ask. A competent sys admin should at least be able to have some insight into the problem.)

My hoster semi-gently pushed me from MT (2.something) to WordPress. But maybe upgrading to a newer MT version is an idea -- at least before mt-comments.cgi makes you move to a dedicated server.

i'd suggest migrating to wordpress on dreamhost...

You don't seem to have very many real comments relative to likely amounts of spam. I notice you put "Did you happen to see.." section on your comment page, which obviously is doing some kind of searching/analysis of your article database. Try turning this off (seems pretty useless/off point to me, given the small number of actual commenters -- but it gets computed for the spammers too).

There is probably some lame code in the script that is doing an expensive operation n**2 (or some non-linear function) times for something on your site where n is large. Typically the solution will be to turn off that feature if you don't know how to fix the code or reduce n. Look in the script for nested loops.

I agree with Cathy and cafl's suggestions above. That CPU number is suspicious.

Here are yesterday's stats (I took Google Analytics's stats javascript off the page, as this was my only recent change):

Process               CPU seconds      user   machine   count  average

mt-comments.cgi         1111.7300   47.275%    4.632%    1393    0.798

mt-tb.cgi                703.6500   29.922%    2.932%    1174    0.599

mt.cgi                   222.8200    9.475%    0.928%     133    1.675

I had my account suspended for a couple of days some time ago because a similar mail about mt-comments.cgi did not reach me (overlooked because it was buried in mail spam).

This might happen because you have code in place that defends against comment spammers. Every attack by a spammer will count on your CPU usage, even if the comment in question does not make it through your line of defense.

That is one reason why I have moved all my comment and trackback functions to a Wordpress shadow site with no Google rank. I don't want scripts running defending successfully against the comment spammers. I want to hide my site from their robots in the first place instead.

This exact same issue happened to me last summer. It led to a frantic few days. There is absolutely NO WAY that my account (with my blog plus everything else) has enough traffic to justify anything like this. That is the time I decided NOT to recommend Dreamhost anymore. I came close to switching to another host, but there are, of course, additional costs (timewise) associated with that, and after all the time I had already put into fixing this problem, I had none left for a switch.

Don't let them bully you around (that's what I consider this). They will be VERY LITTLE help in fixing this issue, but just keep emailing them info to let them know that you are working on it and you need more help from their end.

By the way, I was already using WordPress then so that's not the only issue. I did upgrade and install a few spam-fighting techniques. I seem to be okay now.

Oops, sorry, I forgot an important point in my last comment: The entire incident was due to spam. A huge chunk of all the CPU usage was due to spam (in the form of both messages and trackback links). That was it. Ever since I've fixed that problem all has been fine. I'm nowhere close to using up too many resources.

There are a lot of very annoyed dreamhost customers here:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/kbase/index.cgi?area=3079
(its possible they censor the comments)

Unfortunately, I too am in the same boat as the people in the above thread. They waited until my 3 month money back guarantee was up and 3 days later started sending me these nag emails. No chance of a refund. They screwed me. I wont be recommending them to anyone who buys hosting and plans to do anything with it. If you want hosting to run your own email and share a photo or two, then they are perfect.

I am shocked and disgusted by their conduct and treatment of their customers.

There are a lot of very annoyed dreamhost customers here:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/kbase/index.cgi?area=3079
(its possible they censor the comments)

Unfortunately, I too am in the same boat as the people in the above thread. They waited until my 3 month money back guarantee was up and 3 days later started sending me these nag emails. No chance of a refund. They screwed me. I wont be recommending them to anyone who buys hosting and plans to do anything with it. If you want hosting to run your own email and share a photo or two, then they are perfect.

I am shocked and disgusted by their conduct and treatment of their customers.

Note that there is, in fact, a bug in older versions of mt-comments.cgi that causes high server load, so the CPU numbers probably are real, and you should fix it.

Search for "mt-comments.cgi load" on Google, or see: http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/news/2004/12/comment_spam_load_issue.html

I dont remember seeing anything about CPU time when signing up!!!
i am in the process of switching hosts from DreamHost to StartLogic just because of this. i called 4 Hosting companies and all of them said that they dont pull this BS like DreamHost does!!!