[ubuntu-uk] Strange high CPU usage problem

[Matt Sturdy]

HI Rossen,

I have seen the same problem from time to time.  Once the load average gets
above 4/5 I typically reboot, or kill the process responsible and go make a
cup of tea while everything settles down again.

What browser are you running?  Until recently I was having a real headache
with the flash plugin in Chromium.  I switched to Google Chrome and haven't
suffered nearly as much since.

I have seen that video calls in Skype can be the culprit as well... not much
i can do about that though

Cheers,
Matt


On 24 February 2011 06:37, <bodsda at googlemail.com> wrote:

> 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/
> --
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>
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