I am building software on a linux node, using cmake and make. The node is supposed to be pretty beefy.
16 cores
(Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5660 @ 2.80GHz)
and there is plenty of free memory
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 24096 23307 789 0 525 20817
-/+ buffers/cache: 1964 22132
Swap: 996 1 994

However, running cmake crawls. It takes about 100x longer to run than on my laptop, and most of the time the process is asleep!

Here is a standard output of top -p processid

top - 21:42:37 up 24 days, 9:15, 7 users, load average: 0.64, 0.38, 0.38
Tasks: 1 total, 0 running, 1 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.2%us, 0.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 95.4%id, 2.6%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 24675188k total, 23862316k used, 812872k free, 538220k buffers
Swap: 1020116k total, 1496k used, 1018620k free, 21307456k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
26576 USERISME 15 0 29876 9868 3948 D 0.0 0.0 0:00.87 ccmake


The process uses no memory, barely touches the cpu. What could possibly be going wrong?

* There is only problem for your desktop if you are doing the same thing on your desktop and laptop.
* Better to check the processes by System Monitor (System -> Administration -> System Monitor)
* Check the source code for repeating loops.
* Delete . files (Hidden files and folders) in your home. Make /tmp and /var clean (Don't delete needed files.).