[Discuss] Very slow system, no idle, but nothing running

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On 04/22/2012 12:40 AM, David Kramer wrote:
> This is on my Ubuntu 10.04 laptop (Dell Latitude D820).  I don't know
> when it started, but every now and then I get into this condition where
> the UI seems almost completely locked up (the mouse may move a little
> occasionally  but the clock is frozen).  The hard drive light is often
> on for long periods of time, too.  But even when I can move the mouse,
> clicking on a window's close button does nothing.  Usually it never
> recovers from this state and I need to hard power down.
> 
> The first couple of line from "top -c" read
> top - 00:13:25 up 6 days, 16:25,  6 users,  load average: 16.16, 19.67,
> 21.58
> Tasks: 194 total,   3 running, 189 sleeping,   0 stopped,   2 zombie
> Cpu(s): 13.3%us,  5.0%sy,  0.0%ni,  0.0%id, 81.4%wa,  0.2%hi,  0.2%si,
> 0.0%st
> Mem:   2060180k total,  2009288k used,    50892k free,     3488k buffers
> Swap:  1574328k total,  1492652k used,    81676k free,    62024k cached
> 
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> 
>  6835 david     20   0  704m 184m 2352 R   20  9.2 142:15.54
> plugin-containe
> 19747 david     20   0  226m 170m 4868 S   15  8.5   4:07.80 geeqie
> 
>  1185 root      20   0  231m  82m 6488 S    1  4.1 137:38.82 Xorg
> 
>  6637 david     20   0 1174m 264m  11m D    1 13.2  99:02.16 firefox
> 
> 20780 root      20   0  2548 1240  916 R    1  0.1   0:00.04 top
> 
>     9 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:05.28 events/0
> 
> 
> So I don't see what the cores are so busy with. I was only able to get
> these numbers by eventually getting a text mode screen by pressing
> Ctr-Alt-F2 (get to a text shell) before it decided to do something.
> Swap space is low but should be sufficient.
> 
> What can be locking up my laptop and causing the slowdown?


I forgot to mention that I suspected heat, as the laptop probably has a
lot of cat hair into it.  I currently have it sitting on a cooling pad
with fans, and it still happened.