Meerkat insane cpu usage on Intel i7

**jrevillini** · October 3rd, 2010

Anyone having insane CPU usage after upgrading from Lucid to Meerkat, espcially if running a multicore processor? I have the Intel i7 (quad-core) and as you can see in the attchment, all cores are working pretty damn hard, yet I have nothing running, and if I look at CPU usage in the processes list, no processes report using any CPU.

The CPU usage mostly affects mouse movement and typing, occasionally pausing and then catching up, and it also affects watching video greatly. In Lucid, everything was really smooth and finely tuned.

This is a 64-bit version of ubuntu, if that makes any difference. Can anyone help me troubleshoot the issue or shall I file a bug? I might need help with filing since I don't know what would be helpful to the developers to know.

Thanks,
Jim

**davrosuk** · October 3rd, 2010

I think I saw something similar myself on some Westmere kit. I loaded the live CD on a DL380G7 and noticed a few cores working hard with no associated processes. I didn't look into it as I was only running a few random tests before putting ESX on it. Probably worth running top or htop as root to find out what process is grabbing the CPU.

If nothing interesting presents looking at that... I'm sure other folks on here will have other (better) suggestions but one thing I always like to eliminate in these situations is the kernel. If you grab the latest mainline kernel from the ppa you can quickly and safely compare the shipped version against 2.6.36-rc6. At least that's a starting point!

**envygeeks** · October 3rd, 2010

My personal computer (which is an i7) has not experienced this problem. Perhaps you need to actually see what is using the CPU time. The processes tab can be set to show all processes (root or not) and can also be set to organize by CPU used. That is your first step to try and diagnose...

**jrevillini** · October 3rd, 2010

htop shows high CPU usage while no processes are using much processor at all. It's so nuts. I'll try getting the latest and greatest kernel via ppa as you suggested.

**jrevillini** · October 3rd, 2010

Originally Posted by envygeeks

My personal computer (which is an i7) has not experienced this problem. Perhaps you need to actually see what is using the CPU time. The processes tab can be set to show all processes (root or not) and can also be set to organize by CPU used. That is your first step to try and diagnose...

Did you upgrade or install fresh?

**jrevillini** · October 3rd, 2010

Upgrading the kernel seems to have helped. everything is running a lot more smoothly. no mouse hiccups nor typing hangs, and the processors seem pretty happy.

ALT+printscreen isn't working, but that's probably something utterly different.

Thanks!