CPU usage too high!

rock.k · 03-01-2008, 02:52 AM

Hi.
I first want to tell you that I'm new to the linux environment and just started learning linux. To help you understand my problem I am giving you the configuration of my machine...

Intel Pentium D 3.0 GHz (2X2MB cache)
1GB DDR2 RAM
Intel D945GCCR motherboard

I had Ubuntu 6.10 installed on my machine. But whenever I started ubutu and checked the cpu usage it showed me above 50% (both CPUs) everytime.

Then i switched over to Fedora 8, but the problem remains as it is.
Plz help me!!

blackhole54 · 03-01-2008, 03:10 AM

There is a command line utility called top the will show what process(es) is using all the CPU. I am sure there are GUI utilities that do the same, but I am not familiar with them

To run top just type that word into a terminal. But you might want to review its man(ual) page first. To do that, type:

man top

dragonslayer48dx · 03-01-2008, 03:28 AM

In Ubuntu, the gui utility is System Monitor, in the System->Administration menu. I'm sure Fedora will have something similar.

FWIW- my cpu usage runs 40-65%, and goes to 100% on occasion, but it doesn't seem to affect performance.

Cheers

rock.k · 03-01-2008, 04:10 AM

Hi.
As blackhole54 suggested i tried using the command 'top'
It showed me following results...

top - 20:59:17 up 7 min, 2 users, load average: 1.53, 1.32, 0.72
Tasks: 129 total, 5 running, 124 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.3%us, 41.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 45.2%id, 0.0%wa, 11.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1032540k total, 378116k used, 654424k free, 15416k buffers
Swap: 522104k total, 0k used, 522104k free, 189608k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
66 root 15 -5 0 0 0 R 73 0.0 5:49.09 kacpid
67 root 15 -5 0 0 0 R 20 0.0 1:34.99 kacpi_notify
2471 root 20 0 293m 14m 6396 S 3 1.4 0:13.48 X
2958 rohit 20 0 47624 15m 11m S 1 1.6 0:00.43 gedit
2568 rohit 20 0 22112 9.8m 7228 S 1 1.0 0:00.58 metacity
2569 rohit 20 0 45036 15m 11m S 1 1.6 0:01.04 gnome-panel
2647 rohit 20 0 16996 1712 988 S 1 0.2 0:00.50 gnome-screensav
474 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.06 ata/0
475 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.05 ata/1
2698 rohit 20 0 76304 17m 11m R 0 1.8 0:02.25 gnome-terminal
2761 rohit 20 0 2272 1004 780 R 0 0.1 0:00.52 top
1 root 20 0 2112 656 568 S 0 0.1 0:00.88 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1

can someone plz explain this to me???

blackhole54 · 03-01-2008, 04:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rock.k

can someone plz explain this to me???

First, let me give you a tip about posting computer output (and code/script listings, etc): wrap it in code tags. This will cause everything to line up like it was on your computer screen. A little while back I did a whole post on this which you can view here. It includes instructions on how to do it.

Quote:

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
66 root 15 -5 0 0 0 R 73 0.0 5:49.09 kacpid
67 root 15 -5 0 0 0 R 20 0.0 1:34.99 kacpi_notify

Your culprits are kacpid and kacpi-notify which are using 73% and 20% of (an individual processor's) time respectively. I don't have the time to really dig into this right now, but I think these are both kernel threads that have something to do with ACPI. A quick search turned up other threads that might be related here, here, and here Maybe reading those and/or some more searching might give you some clues, or maybe somebody else can post more about this issue.