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#1 2016-07-12 18:55:58

hushpiper
Member
Registered: 2016-03-23
Posts: 3

CPU Spike Troubleshooting

I apologize ahead of time, this is a vague question.

I've had a recurring problem with CPU load spiraling upwards drastically, either at random or when first opening a program. (Firefox and Chromium are the main offenders.) I'll notice the mouse lag, and then the CPU load starts climbing until I kill whatever process I think is the culprit. If I don't kill the process quickly, the load climbs to 20 or higher in a short time and I end up having to reboot because the computer won't respond.

I'm running a Lenovo E540 ThinkPad, the processor is an Intel i7 quad-core (Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4702MQ CPU @ 2.20GHz), for what that's worth.

I'm not asking what's causing this, because I know there's not nearly enough info for that. But how would I go about gathering info and troubleshooting to find out what it is and maybe how to fix it?

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#2 2016-07-12 19:03:04

graysky
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From: :wq
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 10,595
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Re: CPU Spike Troubleshooting

Run a util like htop when it occurs to see what process or processes are tapping the cpu.


CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck  • AUR packagesZsh and other configs

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#3 2016-07-13 13:16:42

hushpiper
Member
Registered: 2016-03-23
Posts: 3

Re: CPU Spike Troubleshooting

Thank you, I have done that and even without top it is always obvious which program is the culprit. The problem is that it's not just one program that tends to have this issue, and it's frequent. I'm wondering if there's a good way to investigate from here and see if there might be a common cause. For example, I suspect there might be a connection to the execution of javascript, since all the common offenders run javascript and are often (but not always) attempting to run javascript when the problem starts. But I don't know how I would start looking into that.

(I'm not sure this is in the correct section by the way, my apologies if so.)

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