I have HP Compaq 6710s notebook.

Intel core2 1800, 1 Gb RAM

The OS is Slackware 12.2

The problem is - the system suddenly slowed down dramatically.

In past the system worked just fine, but now it takes 10 sec to redraw the window.

When I run top in console - it shows that it itself is eating 80% cpu.
K-menu takes 10 seconds to appear.

Still, cpu frequency is at maximum and scaling governor is "performance"

The thing is - i didn't change anything. I did not update the system, i didn't install new hardware... nothing.

If it was windows, i would think about viruses, but here... i don't know, what to think...

Look for any error messages in dmesg and /var/log/messages
Check if the system overheats.
Check your memory.
Which process eats most of the CPU time?

>>Look for any error messages in dmesg and /var/log/messages

Nothing unusual.

>>Check if the system overheats.

the system is rather hot - about 62C
Still it is not much hotter, then it was in past.

>>Check your memory.

How? Memtest86?

>>Which process eats most of the CPU time?

According to 'top' - top, according to ksysguard - 'ksysguard'
:-)

seamonkey also using cpu and X.
Still, i tried restarting both of them. Didn't help.

i think this might be one of those "rare" linux viruses.
all of the things you mention are very common to windows viruses, so...

I would strongly doubt that. If it were true then Lockywolf could sell his machine to a museum for zillions of euros. There have been "proof of concept" type linux viruses that could possibly be written and could possibly cause problems if around 37 preconditions were met. I have never heard of a linux user ever having contracted a viral infection "in the wild".

Let me repeat, it is theoretically possible to create and spread viruses that could effect linux. I have just never heard of a case where it really happened.

I await enlightenment if I am mistaken.
cheers,
jdk

I've found new strange thing. :-)

This strange behaviour disappears when i unplug the power cable.

And reappears when i plug it back.

Looks like a powersave problem....

Still i don't remember changing anything.

Hmm... things are even more strange.

I killed kde(to get rid of its guidance and powerdevil), hald, acpid, hald-addon-cpufreq, udev

Nothing helps. The system slows down when i plug in the powercable.
With all these demons turned off.

Where should i look next?

Looks like "shit happened" with my hardware.

I have an BIOS-internal memory testing utility - it also runs 5 times faster if the power cable is unplugged.

It looks like hardware issues, hard to say with what tho. How old is this notebook ?

It could be the power transformer.

I would say that you definitely have a hardware failure waiting to happen. Probably it's causing the system to be flooded with interrupts.

While you still have time, get everything off that system onto a backup, and plan to replace the system a.s.a.p. "It's gonna blow, and it's gonna blow soon. Don't be riding it, or standing underneath it, when it hits the ground."

Maybe that's the cause.

If the distro has an easy way to disable acpi you might be able to work around the problem that way. If not, maybe you can disable it at BIOS level (not sure if linux will care about that, though).

Maybe it's just a bad plug or something that can't maintain a constant flow of current which is causing an interrupt flood to the acpi subsystem or something.

You can as well try to pass the acpi=off option to the boot line, of even to disable it at kernel level.