/nods I was just hoping to avoid having to do that. ;)

But yes, I think I should.

Zone using a lot of cpu since 1035
 

Noticed this at build 1035+

The zone instances under linux are eating a lot of cpu time (each).

All I know is that they are racing the cpu a lot more than usual each, which causes a much higher overall load on the server. This, in turn, causes a lot of lag for players.

As to what in the code could be causing this, I am not sure. I can just see it happening plain as day.

Was some sort of new code added lately that is very expensive?

Aye, something doesn't "feel" right for sure. Everytime I try and run a more modern core, I wind up back on 992. I do get spikes (on Windows) where a zone goes to 90%+ CPU for s moment, with nothing happening in the logs at all. I have avoided Linux altogether since 992 since the entire system tends to crash (kernel). So who knows. Maybe you can do a diff on the last version that worked for you against the new source, see what changes were in zone files...