[ubuntu-uk] Strange high CPU usage problem

[Simon Greenwood]

On 24 February 2011 12:05, Rossen Stoyanchev <rstoyanchev at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi-
>
> Thanks for your responses. I will try to answer in one rather than
> individually.
>
> I have a Dell M2400 laptop, Nvidia graphics card (http://dell.to/fqyD5M).
> I run updates regularly.
> I am currently using the proprietary nvidia graphics driver.
> I was using nouveau previously but suspend wasn't working with it.
>
> The key to the problem is it affects all other processes and it doesn't go
> away by simply killing a specific process. What happens usually is I kill or
> stop firefox-bin, plugin-container, chrome and all other apps until the CPU
> calms down completely. However I can't start any new apps (e.g. nautilus)
> without seeing the CPU go to steady 100% for 10-15 seconds even for simple
> things. The only way out is to shut down and reboot.
>
> Because of this pattern it makes me think there is a bug in some
> lower-level service (like accessing the file system or graphics) that
> applications rely on but I'm not sure how to pin it down.
>
> I will try to look out more for patterns but it happens a lot when watching
> flash video (e.g. parleys.com) for extended periods of time, sometimes
> when using skype video. Recently I noticed a fairly isolated case when
> running a CPU-intensive Java build process (no browsers open at all).
>
>
That is very similar to my problem: both Flash and Java apps caused
exponential CPU usage. Shutting down everything would cause the machine to
settle down but it wouldn't become stable until a full reboot. I would
suggest checking to see if there's a BIOS update for the machine as I've
just done that and it's seemed to resolve the heating issues that I had that
apparently came from the Nvidia GPU. Also you don't mention the version and
architecture of Ubuntu that you're using which might be useful to know.

s/


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