machine load extreme peaking for short periods....mouse not moving etc.

[Colin Law]

On 15 January 2013 21:58, Peter Teuben <teuben at astro.umd.edu> wrote:
> On 01/15/2013 03:42 PM, JD wrote:
>>
>> On 01/15/2013 01:30 PM, Peter Teuben wrote:
>>> On my old 2GB memory 32-bit Ubuntu 12.04 laptop I "frequently"
>>> encountered
>>> debilitating periods of extremely high load (>10) and a completely
>>> useless system
>>> for extended periods.  As this never occurred on earlier versions of
>>> Ubuntu and
>>> Fedora, I blaimed this on Unity/Compiz,  as the event where it was
>>> triggered usually
>>> was some mouseclick in either the browser or picasa..
>>>
>>> I figured my new i7 based 4GB memory SSD on / based laptop would make
>>> this history.   I can't
>>> believe this is still happening. Admittedly, 4GB on a 64bit machine is
>>> theoretically
>>> not much better than 2GB on a 32bit machine, but this is really crazy
>>> that I have
>>> to wait for the mouse to respond again for good fraction of a minute.
>>> What is going on here,
>>> is this is problem others have seen as well?
>>>
>>> peter
>>>
>> Hi peter,
>> Open a terminal, exdpand it to full screen, and run
>> top
>>
>> Wait for a while and click the mouse.
>> You should be able to see what's hogging the cpu.
>>
>>
>
> I've done that in these cases, and it's nothing particularly striking,
> other than compiz at not even 100%
>
> My "clicking the mouse" isn't a very reliable way to get the system to
> respond badly I should add,
> but it's not like starting some known app, it's when I'm in the middle
> of something seemingly innocent.
> Not something that I would expect to eat up my swap.

Is your swap being used up?  You did not mention that in your first
post but now you suggest that it is.  Run System Monitor on the
Resources tab and leave it open to check.
If the mouse is not responding there is something seriously wrong.
2GB should be plenty unless you are opening loads of tabs in Firefox
or have a Flash problem or something of the sort.

Colin