How to clear CPU congestion?

[George Toft]

I don't think taking two ram sticks will fix this one - swap is hardly 
used.  Hellafunny prescription, though :)

Upgrade X and/or your video drivers (if they are vendor specific) and 
see if it the problem goes away.  Update your whole system.

If you have a GPU with a fan, ensure the fan spins freely.  If fan is 
sluggish, replace.

What were the answers to the questions/procedures posed below?

George Toft, CISSP, MSIS
623-203-1760




Jerry Davis wrote:
> On Thursday 22 February 2007 15:09, der.hans wrote:
> 
> take two ram sticks and call me in the morning.
> 
> 
> 
>>Am 12. Feb, 2007 schwätzte Josef Lowder so:
>>
>>>.
>>>I asked this question a while ago and never did get a solution,
>>>so thought I would try again.  My system normally runs with a
>>>very small number appearing for "X" under %CPU ... but sometimes
>>>something happenss that causes it to jump to a high number (as
>>>shown below) and the only way I have found to clear it is to
>>>reboot.  Then it runs fine for quite a while until the same
>>>problem occurs again.  Surely there must be some way to clear out
>>>whatever is causing this log jam other than reboot.
>>>
>>>Any suggestions?
>>
>>Try switching to a virtual console and back.
>>
>><ctrl><f1>
>><ctrl><f7>
>>
>>Another thing is to check for apps with memory leaks. Once in top, use m
>>to sort by memory usage. If you see another application, usually a web
>>browser for me, using a lot of memory, quit that application. Normally
>>when this happens for me X is also using a lot of memory.
>>
>>Usually quitting whatever application gets X to also release the extra
>>resources and everything's fine again.
>>
>>Looks like what you're experiencing isn't due to heavy memory usage, but
>>maybe that'll help anyway.
>>
>>ciao,
>>
>>der.hans
>>
>>
>>>top - 11:12:12 up 7 days,  2:14,  5 users,  load average: 1.01, 1.07,
>>>1.08 Tasks:  82 total,   2 running,  80 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
>>>Cpu(s): 56.3% us, 11.6% sy,  5.9% ni, 25.9% id,  0.1% wa,  0.2% hi,  0.0%
>>>si Mem:    515484k total,   417720k used,    97764k free,    11952k
>>>buffers Swap:  2096440k total,     2696k used,  2093744k free,   244728k
>>>cached
>>>
>>> PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>>>3364 root      25   0 48356  38m 4732 R 97.2  7.6   6673:44 X
>>>   1 root      16   0  1564  540  472 S  0.0  0.1   0:02.50 init
>>>   2 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
>>>   3 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:02.82 events/0
>>>   4 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 khelper
>>>   5 root      18  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 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   0:00.11 kblockd/0
>>> 113 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.62 pdflush
>>> 114 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.34 pdflush
>>> 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   0:03.71 kswapd0
>>> 704 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kseriod
>>>
>>>
>>>---------------------------------------------------
> 
>