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#1 2009-11-17 16:05:54

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
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[SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

Greetings,

While I don't claim to be an expert at these things, I'm no newbie either... at least as far as computers go. I admit there are still many things I need to learn about linux, but that's all part of the fun. Anyways on to the point of this topic.

After the power supply on my main pc died and shorted out the mother board with it, I have been forced to use an older computer. It is a computer that I know works as it was used by my wife as a desktop when she didn't feel like using her laptop. Odd.. I know, but hey, whatever she wants she gets tongue.

It is an older pc, a compaq presario 5423. It is running an intel p4 1.6 gz processor and has an nvidia geforce 2 mx agp video card. Ever since the last xorg update that refuses to work with nvidia-96xx, I've been using the nv driver. I have tried briefly the other one (nouvelo or however it's spelled) and while it worked it seemed to slow my computer down and produce some odd effects like screen freezes and whatnot. It was running two 256 MB ram sticks, I replaced them with the two 512's from my main (dead) pc. I have the two hd's from my main pc on it, properly set up (I basically resinstalled arch so that I was sure it was done right, and just because I love the arch linux installation process, it is awesome IMO). I've been running this PC since.. October I believe... whenever it was that I submitted that e17 screenshot... I think that was October.

Here is the issue I am having. The CPU loves to max out.. ie.. reach 100% almost instantly. Open up a browser *poof* 100%, making me wait a moment before I can do anything else. Open up a few tabs.. *poof* 100%... and frequent freezes.  It doesn't seem to matter what I am running, doing, using... it always happens. This happens in pekwm, fluxbox, openbox, e17, wmaker, firebox, twindy, fvwm, even the almighty awesome. Yes, those are all wm's I've tried. Forget trying to run KDE (I did, it loads... but that's about it. I had to hard restart because of total freeze-up). I've tried all kinds of browsers, firefox, chrome, iron, midori, auroa, konq... Midori hates me, the others are too heavy... only Chrome and Iron (both basically the same) work, but still experience the freezes and the like. Uzbl laughed at me as even trying to start it caused a massive CPU spike. I know, hard to believe.. which leaves me thinking there is a serious problem.

MPD spikes the CPU by 20% easily each song change. Googles even more so. Forget the heavyweights like amarok and exile. Pidgin spikes it when loading initially but evens out. Terminal spikes it only when compiling, updating, or building from AUR... or installing a package with pacman.

Here's the thing, when my wife used it before, using LXDE with Open Box and only a total of 512 MB she never experienced this. This box came with Windows XP which ran fine.. somewhat slow but fine. So this all leaves me thinking, something is just wrong.  I am wondering if maybe bad RAM? Maybe the thing is just trying to give up the ghost? Before going and pulling out RAM though I want to see what you guys think.

Here's what HTOP has to say...

CPU(while writing this post): 36.8% (in pekwm!)
Mem: 187/1009 MB (all bars are lite up...)
Swp: 1/2863MB (already tapping into swap?)
Tasks: 128 total, 1 running
Load average: 0.26 0.08 0.06

So yeah, I researched online.. this processor is supposed to be able to even run KDE fine. So something has to be off. Any ideas?

Last edited by mythus (2009-11-20 12:13:53)


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#2 2009-11-17 16:17:07

Ashren
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From: Denmark
Registered: 2007-06-13
Posts: 1,229
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

There is something hogging the CPU. What is the top most CPU eater? Since you're using htop you must be able to see it.

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#3 2009-11-17 16:27:04

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

According to HTOP...

gmm (googles music manager) followed by gmm followed by htop followed by X followed by terminal followed by iron.

Occasionally iron hops up above htop. Occasionally and frequently X hops to the top with near 80% cpu usage. Once in a blue moon I'll see pekwm poke it's head out with 2% or 3%.. but right now it's basically nill.

I should note, just moving the cursor right now seems to cause X to spike. Hmmm....


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#4 2009-11-17 16:33:24

Ashren
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From: Denmark
Registered: 2007-06-13
Posts: 1,229
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

After reading your post properly - I'm thinking it could stem from using the nv driver.

Try using the nvidia-96xx driver again and post your xorg.conf here if it does not work.

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#5 2009-11-17 16:34:22

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

Ok, will do.


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#6 2009-11-17 16:43:25

grey
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From: Europe
Registered: 2007-08-23
Posts: 679

Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

Mem: 187/1009 MB (all bars are lite up...)

That looks good. The system uses your memory to cache things, as it is supposed to do. Can you confirm this with free -m?

Have you seen this since you moved to nv, or was it already a problem with the old nvidia driver / xorg-server 1.6 ?

Since you have 2 hd, I would create a spare partition somewhere, 7.5G is plenty, and install another distro on it, just to compare. Something with xorg-server 1.6 and nvidia drivers available. It doesn't even have to be lightweight - with your specs even Ubuntu should be usable.

Or you could try to use the vesa driver. Not as a long-term solution - it's painful - but again just to see if these CPU spikes happen there as well.


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#7 2009-11-17 17:23:26

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

Well right before I changed drivers back to nvidia-96xx, I did a pacman -Syu check.. there was a new xorg update waiting for me. So I updated and switched back to nvidia-96xx driver.

Still having the fun CPU issues so this must not be an nv driver thing itself.

free -m provides the following...

total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1009        606        403          0         60        387
-/+ buffers/cache:        158        851
Swap:         2863          0       2863

Therefore it would seem that memory issue is not the problem.

Watching the cpu spike just because I type is very unnerving. Heck just running htop did a spike. Poor old computer... Just for S&G I tried once again to load kde. Neopunk killed it with it's massive cpu usage + x trying to match it. What can I say.. X was jealousy, there was no way X was going to let neopunk use more CPU than it.

Ah.. so nerve racking. I've been working on this for almost two months now. I'll look and she what distros I got lieing around.. been awhile since I burned one and not really wanting too.. had no desire since arch is what I want. But I suppose I do need to compare to see if it is something else like X causing this.

I'll do that in a bit.. I'll wait a moment incase anyone else has another suggestion. Give me time to get off my butt and do some honey-do's for my wife.


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#8 2009-11-17 19:32:53

mandog
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From: Peru
Registered: 2008-09-17
Posts: 218

Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

Have you tried going back to your old ram to see what happens.


I'm dyslexic Please do not complain about puntuation or spelling and remember most dyslexic people have above average iq.

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#9 2009-11-17 19:42:28

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

No, I haven't, but would that really be the case when it looks like the memory is fine?


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#10 2009-11-18 14:27:34

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

Greetings,

As suggested, I downloaded and installed Ubuntu to a new partition. It is 9.10.
Xorg Version: 1.6.4 (10604000)
Nvidia Driver: 96.43.13
Desktop: Gnome

Now note, this is Gnome in it's full glory, running compiz and such. I am also running Epiphany Browser (webkit version) with two tabs open, Empathy Messenger, Rhythmbox, htop, and NVIDIA X Server Settings.

My CPU Usage is at a steady 20% to 35%. Occasionally it goes as high as 90% but only briefly when opening a window or whatever. I have yet seen it to spike to 100% and have not experienced any lag as of yet. When running the restricted drivers manager and updating it got only to 50% cpu usage. Rhythmbox and Epiphany (curse gnome for making two clients with similar spelling/sounding names.. epiphany and empathy..) are the two largest CPU users, each taking turns at being at the top. X is almost nill unless I do anything that causes redrawing, such as window moving, but it only goes up to e.. 10% or so. Compiz goes up to 20 to 30% during redrawing but otherwise stays rather low.

This leaves me to think that Xorg is the culprit for my frustrations in Arch. In Arch, GNOME laughs at me just like KDE does while it freezes my system. Here GNOME is running fine. I wonder how KDE runs... I think I'll need to investigate rolling back Xorg... it looks like the issue to me anyways.


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#11 2009-11-18 17:36:37

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

Even KDE works fine, after the inital nepomunk indexing; on ubuntu. It must be an xorg issue then. Time to 'fall back' on the older xorg.


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#12 2009-11-18 20:22:10

uwinkelvos
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Registered: 2009-06-07
Posts: 129

Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

maybe you should report this upstream to xorg, if there isn't something similar in their bug tracker yet.

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#13 2009-11-19 13:41:34

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
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Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

*nods* I plan to after I roll back xorg today to completely make sure that is the issue.


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#14 2009-11-20 12:09:29

mythus
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From: MS Gulf Coast
Registered: 2008-05-15
Posts: 509
Website

Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

It was an xorg issue. Using the xorgold rep I found on the forums made rolling back a walk in the park. KDE is still sluggish for me but eh it runs. GNOME is completely usable and nice to use now, very snappy. The WM's fly again just like they are supposed to.

So thanks guys, I thought I was loosing my mind there for a moment.


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#15 2023-05-08 18:05:20

Pyrophorus2
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Registered: 2023-04-11
Posts: 14

Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

I would like to try this, but I having a hard time finding where to go for xorgold

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#16 2023-05-08 18:25:34

2ManyDogs
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Registered: 2012-01-15
Posts: 4,645

Re: [SOLVED] high CPU and freezing issues

Pyrophorus2 wrote:

I would like to try this, but I having a hard time finding where to go for xorgold

Maybe because this thread is 14 years old? Please do not necrobump.

Closing.


How to post. A sincere effort to use modest and proper language and grammar is a sign of respect toward the community.

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