"/usr/bin/whiptail" is eating my CPU alive

[Vunutus]

I got home today to notice that my computer was in an uproar with all fans blowing at maximum speed and the CPU temperature showing that it was running fairly hot.

Puzzled, I poked around a bit and noticed that I left my CPU frequency scaler thing set to not scale back. I figured this had something to do with it so I set it back to normal operation. This, however, did not help the problem.

I ran ps aux and determined that a program called whiptail (/usr/bin/whiptail started by root) is apparently using 96% of my CPU's clock time CONSTANTLY, and has been doing so for 1200 minutes. I googled for what this program was and didn't find any consistent definition.

Does anyone know what this is any why it's taking so much CPU? I haven't tried restarting yet, but even that does make it go away I'd still like to know what it is and what program could possibly use nearly all of my CPU for 1200 minutes without finishing what it was doing.

The only new or out of the ordinary things I did in that timeframe was installing my video driver (after which I restarted, I believe) and messing around with Windows XP inside virtualbox. VirtualBox confirms, however, that no image is currently active.

[tommynz1975]

this link may or may not be useful to you

http://www.wlug.org.nz/whiptail(1)NAME

whiptail - display dialog boxes from shell scripts
SYNOPSIS

whiptail [ __--title__ ''title''? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--title__%20%27%27title%27%27?action=create) [ __--backtitle__ ''backtitle''? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--backtitle__%20%27%27backtitle%27%27?action=create) [ __--clear__? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--clear__?action=create) [ __--defaultno__? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--defaultno__?action=create) [ __--fb__? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--fb__?action=create) [ __--nocancel__? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--nocancel__?action=create) [ __--noitem__? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--noitem__?action=create) [ __--separate-output__? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--separate-output__?action=create) [ __--scrolltext__? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20__--scrolltext__?action=create) box-options
DESCRIPTION

whiptail is a program that will let you to present a variety of questions or display messages using dialog boxes from a shell script. Currently, these types of dialog boxes are implemented: yes/no box, menu box, input box, message box, text box, info box, checklist box, radiolist box gauge box, and password box.
OPTIONS

--clearThe screen will be cleared to the screen attribute on exit. This doesn't work in an xterm (and descendants) if alternate screen switching is enabled, because in that case slang writes to (and clears) an alternate screen.--defaultnoThe dialog box will open with the cursor over the No button.--fbUse full buttons. (By default, whiptail uses compact buttons).--nocancelThe dialog box won't have a Cancel button.--noitemThe menu, checklist and radiolist widgets will display tags only, not the item strings.--separate-outputFor checklist widgets, output result one line at a time, with no quoting. This facilitates parsing by another program.--title titleSpecifies a title string to be displayed at the top of the dialog box.--backtitle backtitleSpecifies a backtitle string to be displayed on the backdrop, at the top of the screen.--scrolltextForce the display of a vertical scrollbar. Box Options
--yesno text height widthA yes/no dialog box of size height rows by width columns will be displayed. The string specified by text is displayed inside the dialog box. If this string is too long to be fitted in one line, it will be automatically divided into multiple lines at appropriate places. The text string may also contain the sub-string or newline characters `n' to control line breaking explicitly. This dialog box is useful for asking questions that require the user to answer either yes or no. The dialog box has a Yes button and a No button, in which the user can switch between by pressing the TAB key.--msgbox text height widthA message box is very similar to a yes/no box. The only difference between a message box and a ; yes/no box is that a message box has only a single OK button. You can use this dialog box to display any message you like. After reading the message, the user can press the ENTER key so that whiptail will exit and the calling shell script can continue its operation.--infobox text height widthAn info box is basically a message box. However, in this case, whiptail will exit immediately after displaying the message to the user. The screen is not cleared when whiptail exits, so that the message will remain on the screen until the calling shell script clears it later. This is useful when you want to inform the user that some operations are carrying on that may require some time to finish.--inputbox text height width [init? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5Binit?action=create)An input box is useful when you want to ask questions that require the user to input a string as the answer. If init is supplied it is used to initialize the input string. When inputing the string, the BACKSPACE key can be used to correct typing errors. If the input string is longer than can be fitted in the dialog box, the input field will be scrolled. On exit, the input string will be printed on stderr.--passwordbox text height width [init? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5Binit?action=create)A password box is similar to an input box, except the text the user enters is not displayed. This is useful when prompting for passwords or other sensative information. Be aware that if anything is passed in--textbox file height widthA text box lets you display the contents of a text file in a dialog box. It is like a simple text file viewer. The user can move through the file by using the UP/DOWN, PGUP/PGDN and HOME/END keys available on most keyboards. If the lines are too long to be displayed in the box, the LEFT/RIGHT keys can be used to scroll the text region horizontally. For more convenience, forward and backward searching functions are also provided.--menu text height width menu-height [ ''tag item''? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20%27%27tag%20item%27%27?action=create) ...As its name suggests, a menu box is a dialog box that can be used to present a list of choices in the form of a menu for the user to choose. Each menu entry consists of a tag string and an item string. The tag gives the entry a name to distinguish it from the other entries in the menu. The item is a short description of the option that the entry represents. The user can move between the menu entries by pressing the UP/DOWN keys, the first letter of the tag as a hot-key, or the number keys 1-9. There are menu-height entries displayed in the menu at one time, but the menu will be scrolled if there are more entries than that. When ; whiptail exits, the tag of the chosen menu entry will be printed on stderr.--checklist text height width list-height [ ''tag item status''? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20%27%27tag%20item%20status%27%27?action=creat e) ...A checklist box is similar to a menu box in that there are multiple entries presented in the form of a menu. Instead of choosing one entry among the entries, each entry can be turned on or off by the user. The initial on/off state of each entry is specified by status. On exit, a list of the tag strings of those entries that are turned on will be printed on stderr.--radiolist text height width list-height [ ''tag item status''? (http://www.wlug.org.nz/%5B%20%27%27tag%20item%20status%27%27?action=creat e) ...A radiolist box is similar to a menu box. The only difference is that you can indicate which entry is currently selected, by setting its status to on.--gauge text height width percentA gauge box displays a meter along the bottom of the box. The meter indicates the percentage. New percentages are read from standard input, one integer per line. The meter is updated to reflect each new percentage. If stdin is XXX, then subsequent lines up to another XXX are used for a new prompt. The gauge exits when EOF is reached on stdin. DIAGNOSTICS

Exit status is 0 if whiptail is exited by pressing the Yes or OK button, and 1 if the No or Cancel button is pressed. Otherwise, if errors occur inside whiptail or whiptail is exited by pressing the ESC key, the exit status is -1.
AUTHOR

Based on the man page for dialog(1) (http://www.wlug.org.nz/dialog%281%29) by:
Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk) - version 0.3
Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) - patch for version 0.4
Modifications for whiptail by: Enrique Zanardi (ezanard@debian.org

[Hospadar]

in short, it shouldn't have been sucking things up and is probably safe to kill, it looks like an xmessage clone, which is designed to get simple input from a user from a shell script.