Arch Linux

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Bizarre spikes in CPU/HDD activity

When I use ext3 with anything other than Gnome, I sometimes get weird spikes in activity... For about 20 seconds, at intervals of more than five minutes or so, my HDD activity light goes on and the hard drive begins clicking away, and CPU usage goes to 100%. Syncing doesn't stop this, and as far as I can tell I'm not infected with any sort of rootkit... What is going on?

sam

Member

Registered: 2008-05-23

Posts: 82

Re: Bizarre spikes in CPU/HDD activity

What do you mean anything other than gnome?  Anything other than gnome apps?  It maybe extra libraries being loaded for others apps (like qt).  You may want to use top, htop, or the gnome system monitor to see what is using the cpu.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Bizarre spikes in CPU/HDD activity

I mean desktop environments... This doesn't happen with Gnome, but if I use XFCE, LXDE, or a plain window manager I get these spikes.

sam

Member

Registered: 2008-05-23

Posts: 82

Re: Bizarre spikes in CPU/HDD activity

Oh ok.  Try top in a terminal and see what process is taking up so much processing power.  It maybe a daemon that is improperly configured and is doing a task too often.  In that case, check the man pages and change a config file in /etc.

If you see a program you are using, or have just opened keeping the cpu busy then its another reason.  Minimal desktop environments don't load any dedicated libraries for programs and once you are done using them, they unload the libraries related to that process.  This is how minimal de's use very little ram.  The down-side of this is every time you use an application with many libraries, it will take a long time to load because all those libraries must be loaded before the program loads.  This is especially true if you try using gnome apps (like firefox or evolution) in minimal des.  In that case the de has to load a bunch of gnome and gtk libraries.

Gnome on the other hand loads all these libraries when you login (after the gdm screen), and keeps them loaded for the duration of the time you are logged in.  This causes gnome to use more ram and feel more sluggish when doing certain small tasks, but is probably easier on cpu and ram.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Bizarre spikes in CPU/HDD activity

Hmm, top doesn't show anything as taking up all my CPU power. Neither does lxtask (when set to display all tasks)... It looks as though it's the kernel or something.

kezar

Member

Registered: 2007-08-14

Posts: 61

Re: Bizarre spikes in CPU/HDD activity

If it happens at 00:02, it's the updatedb in cron.daily.
If not, well just monitor your system, even if it comes from the kernel you'll see it.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Bizarre spikes in CPU/HDD activity

Update: apparently, it's Firefox. No idea what it's doing; certainly not rendering web pages.

*sigh* I can't wait for Midori to become fully functional.

B-Con

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2007-12-17

Posts: 554

Website

Re: Bizarre spikes in CPU/HDD activity

Update: apparently, it's Firefox. No idea what it's doing; certainly not rendering web pages.

This has been a culprit of past with Firefox: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2008/05/25/ … urveballs/ . That's what I first thought of when I saw this thread.

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