Very slow. takes ages to boot, cpu at 100% whats my best option?

[Paul VW]

I have had ubuntu on this comp since about version 6, and since version 8 (and now 9) it has been getting slower and slower, the system monitor says the cpu is running at 100% all the time!!

how do I fix this? do I wipe and re-install? or is there another way round this?

I think the computer is fine, as it runs windows xp without a hitch (cpu usages is running at 10%ish)

[kpkeerthi]

You can check whats occupying your CPU using the top command. Press 'q' to quit and post the output here.

[Paul VW]

thanks for the reply, here are the results:

paul@paul-desktop:~$ TOP
bash: TOP: command not found
paul@paul-desktop:~$ top

top - 17:53:42 up 10 min, 2 users, load average: 2.43, 2.41, 1.29
Tasks: 126 total, 3 running, 123 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 52.1%us, 17.8%sy, 29.4%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.3%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 766188k total, 750916k used, 15272k free, 319820k buffers
Swap: 1726948k total, 0k used, 1726948k free, 209416k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3315 paul 20 0 3100 1352 660 S 22.9 0.2 1:40.51 dbus-daemon
3465 paul 39 19 27860 10m 5616 R 19.9 1.4 1:19.24 tracker-indexer
3396 paul 20 0 28060 14m 8140 S 19.3 1.9 1:14.02 python
3378 paul 39 19 51892 10m 4968 S 15.6 1.3 0:58.87 trackerd
2819 root 20 0 154m 16m 7488 S 9.0 2.1 0:08.18 Xorg
3387 paul 20 0 19252 7276 5944 S 8.6 0.9 0:35.90 tracker-applet
3794 paul 20 0 45324 13m 10m R 3.3 1.9 0:00.42 gnome-terminal
2744 root 20 0 5180 1800 1588 S 0.3 0.2 0:00.04 hald-addon-stor
3530 paul 20 0 213m 81m 26m S 0.3 10.9 0:23.57 firefox
1 root 20 0 3084 1888 564 S 0.0 0.2 0:01.38 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.13 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 events/0
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kstop/0

[kpkeerthi]

When posting command outputs, enclose it within [code] tags.

[Paul VW]

ok here goes again


paul@paul-desktop:~$ top

top - 12:15:52 up 9 min, 2 users, load average: 3.04, 2.65, 1.35
Tasks: 129 total, 3 running, 126 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 50.3%us, 20.7%sy, 29.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 766188k total, 648404k used, 117784k free, 62052k buffers
Swap: 1726948k total, 0k used, 1726948k free, 335288k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3341 paul 20 0 3072 1316 660 S 28.2 0.2 1:19.31 dbus-daemon
3485 paul 39 19 27876 10m 5612 R 20.9 1.4 1:05.33 tracker-indexer
3415 paul 20 0 28060 14m 8140 S 18.9 1.9 1:00.91 python
3397 paul 39 19 55108 11m 4960 S 16.6 1.5 0:46.77 trackerd
3407 paul 20 0 19384 7292 5908 S 9.3 1.0 0:27.88 tracker-applet
2838 root 20 0 158m 18m 7400 S 3.3 2.5 0:16.38 Xorg
3540 paul 20 0 276m 102m 28m S 2.7 13.8 0:40.91 firefox
3870 paul 20 0 45780 14m 10m R 0.7 1.9 0:00.51 gnome-terminal
1 root 20 0 3084 1888 564 S 0.0 0.2 0:01.38 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.10 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 events/0
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kstop/0
9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd/0
paul@paul-desktop:~$

[Bark]

This looks like some kind of bug in your system. The easiest way to resolve it may be to reinstall Ubuntu.

The dbus thing seems to be flaky, from my experience, and goes awry after upgrades.

[kpkeerthi]

No wait. No need to reinstall. There is nothing wrong I could see from the top command output.

You seem to have tracker (http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/tracker-search-tool) enabled and it is busy indexing your files. You can read about it here (http://projects.gnome.org/tracker/). In my experience, I find tracker using up a lot of cpu and a lot of users have reported the issue in the forum. You may uninstall it using:

sudo apt-get purge tracker-search-tool and reboot.

Or disable it completely from starting under System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications.

Or let the indexer run for a few hours (the time may vary depending on how much data you have) and see if there is an improvement.

My suggestion would be... uninstall tracker-search-tool and user Places -> Search for Files if you need to search something on your computer.

[Paul VW]

thanks for that :D:D it has seemed to have worked! much better now

paul@paul-desktop:~$ top

top - 17:40:55 up 3 min, 2 users, load average: 1.21, 0.63, 0.25
Tasks: 122 total, 3 running, 119 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 6.0%us, 0.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 93.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 766188k total, 526668k used, 239520k free, 56316k buffers
Swap: 1726948k total, 0k used, 1726948k free, 207028k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2829 root 20 0 184m 44m 7436 S 4.0 5.9 0:12.26 Xorg
3491 paul 20 0 231m 100m 26m R 1.3 13.4 0:16.52 firefox
3794 paul 20 0 2448 1180 912 R 0.3 0.2 0:00.04 top
1 root 20 0 3084 1884 564 S 0.0 0.2 0:01.39 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.06 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 events/0
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kstop/0
9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd/0
10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kblockd/0
11 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
12 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
13 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cqueue