Hi,

I was using X forwarding via SSH to access the file manager, Nautilus. My intention was to search for a file on the remote machine.

The Nautilus opens fine and I am able to browse the files on the remote computer but, when I try to search for a file through Nautilus' search option it becomes unresponsive. From top I found that the IO wait time of CPU is reaching 97%.Does this mean that Nautilus is trying to send the directory structure through the network to my local computer and searching for here.

I thought that by using X forwarding, only the local X will be used by the process which executes in the remote machine. If so, Nautilus should search for the file in the remote machine and shouldn't result in CPU IO wait times shooting up which is not in this case.

Also, I have observed that if I start Mozilla Firefox through a X forwarded SSH, my local Firefox is starting up instead of the remote one. I verified this as it shows my history and plugins.

I have read documents online about X forwarding but still this has left my understanding about it bit blurred. Please explain how it works, especially in the above two cases.

Thanks.

Advacements..


I found that the IO wait time was not resulting from Nautilus sending the directory structure from remote machine to my local X. Infact, Nautilus wasn't sending the directory structure as I thought initially. For some strange reason, Nautilus was occupying 1.3 Gb (and growing) of RAM which is making the system to SWAP causing the IO WAIT time on the CPU.

Now my question is why Nautilus is taking 1.3 Gb of RAM to search a simple 5 level directory structure which hardly contains 100 files altogether. When I access the Nautilus on the remote machine through vnc viewer, it searches and reports fine.

Thanks.