something's eating my ram/processor

[Bob Chiodini]

On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 10:31 -0700, Robin Laing wrote:
> Duncan Lithgow wrote:
> > I won't start posting many details because I can't work out what is
> > relevant. The symptoms are:
> > 
> > a.) logging off is taking close to 30 seconds, even if i've hardly used
> > any apps. this is also true of the root user.
> > 
> > b.) nope, there are no network users.
> > 
> > c.) nautilus shows up as using 7.7MB and if i halt or kill it a nautilus
> > windows pops up located on /home. That process then has the same
> > properties. It even did this one time when I had logged in and only used
> > firefox - never even started nautilus. It shows up in 'System Monitor"
> > as Memory: 53.3MB, X Server Memory: 7.7MB, Nice: 0, ID: 6101, Status:
> > Sleeping, RSS: 21.6MB, Shared: 10.4MB
> > 
> > d.) The little gnome applet shows "processor 100%" and everything takes
> > for ever.
> > 
> > e.) evolution gets mail only every 15 minutes.
> > 
> > What can I do to extract useful information?
> > 
> > Hmm, I just thought to use winetools to kill all wine processes - that's
> > brought processor down to normal levels.
> > 
> > nope that's not it - the processor usage drops as soon as i click on the
> > gnome drawer holding my wine apps. and rockets again as soon as i close
> > the drawer. killing all wine processes doesn't help.
> > 
> > Duncan
> > 
> 
> This is only a start.
> 
> What does "top" show?
> 
> In a terminal, type in top and read the data in the first 7 lines. 
> the "load average" is one indication.  Top will also show what process 
> and how much resources it is using underneath.
> 
> I run SETI at home it uses about 95% of my CPU.
> 
> Look at the number of stopped processes and any waiting for io as 
> these are indications of a bottle neck in your system.
> 
> I learned a long time ago that memory being used is no indication of 
> how much memory is actually in use for a particular process.  Even on 
> an idle machine, most memory can be in usage.
> -- 
> Robin Laing
> 

In top the < and > keys cause top to sort on different columns > will
sort on the Mem info.

Bob...