Weird vmstat reports in 2.2.18

I'm getting some strange reports with vmstat on a dual iPPro running 2.2.18, it doesnt happen very frequently, but i see it a lot when compiling something (kernel and mysql specially, not when compiling small stuff), though it doesnt look like a high-load issue. When the machine is idle (ie. most of the time at the moment) it doesnt show up.

The report is like this:
#vmstat 1 60 | awk '{ print $16 }'
id
0
0
20452224
1
20452224
0
1
20452224
1
0
0

I wasnt able to trigger it in a predictable way, it just pops up... BUT if i open two vmstats in different consoles.. the number doesnt show up in both, just in one of them... so i'm not sure at all if this is a kernel bug, or just another (vmstat?) feature =)
I also found a reference to something similar in
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0009.3/0273.html

Alberto
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i can consistently produce this on dual p3 600/2.2.17pre20. in my case it's the `ab' benchmark tool supplied with apache that helps reproduce it. incidentally i only noticed this in the last day or two, good to know i'm not the only one. :-)

our setup is apache/php/postgresql. fairly intensive pages. i start seeing vmstat oddities after about 15 concurrent requests.

the vmstat processes probably aren't reading /proc/* at exactly the same time, so the numbers they see will likely be different...

j.
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