Problem solved by a surprise "fix" ... more details below. On Saturday 01 July 2006 10:49 am, Craig White wrote: > I'm gathering that kded is using up the majority of your cpu and is out > of whack. The first thing to do is to determine whether this problem is > with kde on your system in general or simply with your user settings. > The easiest way to figure this out is to create another user, log out of > of your user account and log into another user account. You need to > determine that after you log out that kde has completely released all > processes before you log in on the other account so it's probably a good > idea to obtain a virtual console and log in as root > and run top to make sure that kded has ended. should get > you back to login mode. > > Perhaps you want to get back to us with the outcome of this and let us > know which distro, which version of kde you are using. Turns out that at least one major cause of my slow-down problem was apparently that a program called 'kat' was running in the background. Someone on LinuxQuestions.org suggested killing it off as a first step and doing that certainly made everything run much better -- actually pretty fast again. However, it seems evident that there must be some other issues that also need to be investigated and perhaps resolved. So, I'm still hoping that someone can provide some additional guidance on what to check, what to change, and how to make sure the system is properly configured. Even after "killing" 'kat,' 'top' was still showing very high percentages under %CPU time -- in the very high 90% range. But then, after I created a new user, as Craig suggested, the %CPU time dropped to less than 1% both for the new user and for myself as the original user. That is a mystery to me. Another mystery is that when I do: 'who' I see these results: $ who joe :0 Jul 1 17:20 joe pts/0 Jul 1 17:20 joe pts/1 Jul 2 14:15 joe pts/3 Jul 2 14:16 This makes no sense because I am only logged on once as one user. So why is 'who' showing four separate users by the same name? Also, 'top' shows 3 users and it lists a whole bunch of processes running, most of which I do not recognize. What are all these processes and how can one determine which others (if any, like 'kat') might well be eliminated? Finally (for now), what is the difference between running 'top' and and what happens when it is running and one presses capital M, the results of which are different (shown further below), but I don't understand what that difference is. top - 14:19:51 up 5 days, 6:10, 3 users, load average: 0.16, 0.39, 0.45 Tasks: 92 total, 1 running, 91 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 1.7% us, 0.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 98.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si Mem: 515484k total, 436460k used, 79024k free, 27876k buffers Swap: 1269084k total, 22904k used, 1246180k free, 181348k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 3031 root 16 0 31448 20m 3808 S 1.3 4.1 599:30.84 X 13220 joe 16 0 1996 1036 804 R 0.3 0.2 0:00.03 top 1 root 16 0 1560 504 452 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.26 init 2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.11 ksoftirqd/0 3 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:03.18 events/0 4 root 14 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 khelper 5 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kthread 7 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid 81 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 1:45.09 kblockd/0 116 root 19 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0 115 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 7:22.65 kswapd0 704 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kseriod 793 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:24.61 kjournald 937 root 15 -4 1564 460 408 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.16 udevd 1169 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd 2348 root 16 0 1580 428 408 S 0.0 0.1 0:08.55 ifplugd 2410 root 16 0 1608 608 496 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.18 syslogd 2418 root 15 0 2324 504 452 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.06 klogd 2450 root 16 0 1548 604 520 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 acpid 2536 root 16 0 5756 1768 1144 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.84 cupsd 2677 root 23 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kgameportd 2835 xfs 16 0 4196 2220 1068 S 0.0 0.4 0:01.03 xfs 2850 messageb 15 0 2352 1012 792 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.20 dbus-daemon-1 2865 root 17 0 4128 1520 1188 S 0.0 0.3 2:50.73 hald 3018 root 16 0 2796 616 536 S 0.0 0.1 0:24.37 nifd 3029 root 16 0 2612 720 616 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 kdm 3115 nobody 16 0 11420 732 616 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.04 mDNSResponder 3134 daemon 16 0 1684 508 472 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 atd 3182 root 18 0 2140 476 472 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 xinetd 3554 root 16 0 1552 448 396 S 0.0 0.1 0:08.27 vnetd 3637 clamav 16 0 4340 588 552 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 freshclam 3658 root 16 0 1600 576 524 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.04 crond 3733 root 16 0 2656 556 492 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.03 lisa 3767 root 18 0 1548 352 348 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mingetty 3768 root 18 0 1548 352 348 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mingetty 3769 root 18 0 1544 352 348 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mingetty ================ top - 14:21:10 up 5 days, 6:11, 3 users, load average: 0.07, 0.31, 0.42 Tasks: 92 total, 2 running, 90 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.7% us, 0.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.3% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si Mem: 515484k total, 436552k used, 78932k free, 27996k buffers Swap: 1269084k total, 22904k used, 1246180k free, 181348k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 23646 joe 15 0 148m 97m 14m S 0.0 19.4 472:09.87 kded 13097 joe 16 0 71052 37m 24m S 0.0 7.4 0:04.63 kontact 6454 joe 15 0 33676 25m 25m S 0.0 5.0 1:34.78 dosexec 24193 joe 15 0 36652 25m 17m S 0.0 5.0 0:04.64 konqueror 3031 root 15 0 31448 20m 3808 S 0.3 4.1 599:32.57 X 23571 joe 16 0 26676 19m 7520 S 0.0 3.8 0:34.63 mdkapplet 23677 joe 15 0 28768 17m 13m S 0.0 3.4 0:16.50 kicker 23582 joe 16 0 22088 15m 7400 S 0.0 3.1 0:36.42 net_applet 23673 joe 16 0 26740 14m 12m S 0.0 2.9 0:03.25 kdesktop 23681 joe 15 0 26052 14m 11m S 0.0 2.9 0:01.20 kmix 23652 joe 15 0 30436 14m 11m S 0.0 2.9 0:00.85 knotify 13228 joe 16 0 27052 14m 11m R 0.3 2.8 0:00.58 konsole 24087 joe 15 0 25856 13m 11m S 0.0 2.7 0:00.72 kio_uiserver 23684 joe 16 0 26732 13m 11m S 0.0 2.7 0:00.79 korgac 23671 joe 15 0 25332 13m 10m S 0.0 2.6 0:07.10 kwin 6287 joe 16 0 23508 12m 12m S 0.0 2.5 0:01.60 dosexec 23669 joe 15 0 24584 12m 10m S 0.0 2.5 0:00.88 ksmserver 23683 joe 15 0 23736 11m 9932 S 0.0 2.3 0:00.63 krandrtray 23666 joe 15 0 23684 10m 9116 S 0.0 2.1 0:00.29 kaccess 23643 joe 15 0 23968 9776 8528 S 0.0 1.9 0:00.39 klauncher 10289 joe 15 0 24260 9752 8384 S 0.0 1.9 0:00.01 kio_file 13102 joe 15 0 24100 9532 8268 S 0.0 1.8 0:00.00 kio_file 13101 joe 16 0 24100 9528 8264 S 0.0 1.8 0:00.00 kio_file 13103 joe 16 0 24100 9524 8260 S 0.0 1.8 0:00.00 kio_file 23638 joe 16 0 23000 8772 7540 S 0.0 1.7 0:00.63 kdeinit 23641 joe 16 0 22436 8476 7276 S 0.0 1.6 0:00.70 dcopserver 12653 joe 15 0 21100 7336 5200 S 0.0 1.4 0:00.45 artsd 23614 joe 15 0 17144 6508 5420 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.34 gnome-volume-ma 10914 joe 16 0 15852 5712 4996 S 0.0 1.1 0:00.00 kdesud 6455 joe 16 0 30160 5664 4624 S 0.0 1.1 0:00.12 auserver 13106 joe 16 0 7152 5148 1792 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.19 aspell 6456 joe 16 0 27032 4908 3908 S 0.0 1.0 0:01.02 xcrt 23604 joe 15 0 6380 2692 2256 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.20 s2u 23631 joe 16 0 3928 2488 1764 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.08 gconfd-2 2835 xfs 17 0 4196 2220 1068 S 0.0 0.4 0:01.03 xfs 23483 root 16 0 3552 1876 1524 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.02 kdm --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - 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