[ubuntu-uk] Strange high CPU usage problem

bodsda at googlemail.com bodsda at googlemail.com
Thu Feb 24 09:37:41 UTC 2011


Hi Rossen,

I have had similar problems in the past where having many tabs open in firefox would eventually cause the whole DE to freeze up. When this happens I would drop to tty1 and kill the firefox-bin process, and that would restore things.

Start with the obvious: run an update, upgrade - to make sure you have the latest packages. Ditch compiz effects and try running like that for a while.

What are your system specs?

Try to narrow down the issue by recording trends, does it usually happen at a certain time of day, does it happen on certain websites etc. - it may be worth creating a new user and seeing if it happens on that account.

Hope this helps,
Bodsda
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-----Original Message-----
From: Rossen Stoyanchev <rstoyanchev at yahoo.com>
Sender: ubuntu-uk-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 01:29:07 
To: <ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com>
Reply-To: Rossen Stoyanchev <rstoyanchev at yahoo.com>,
	UK Ubuntu Talk <ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com>
Subject: [ubuntu-uk] Strange high CPU usage problem

Hi-

Apologies if this isn't the right place. Having started as a Ubuntu user in 7.04 I find myself completely baffled by the this one.

Every now and then an application starts using a lot of CPU. This is typically when running Flash or Java typically in a browser but I'm not completely sure about what triggers. The strange thing is that once the problem occurs all applications become affected. Even simple things like opening a file browser or dragging windows around spikes the CPU to 100% for 10-15 seconds or longer. It's like a gradual melt-down with the system becoming unusable even for simple tasks. The only solution at that point is powering off the laptop completely, which takes a long time since all processes are now really slow to close down.

Needless to say a very debilitating problem to have and I'm baffled as to how to narrow things down. I know how to look up CPU usage by process with top but when all applications begin to exhibit this behavior that's pretty much useless.

Thanks,
Rossen

-- 
ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/


More information about the ubuntu-uk mailing list