Linux Mint Forums

Every once in a while I'll be browsing or something, and I notice in the system resources monitor that there's near-constant usage of at least have the available CPU. Even if I clsoe the browser. this doesn't stop, and I have nothing else running (other thna the startup programs). However, when i open the monitor and look at the running processes, there's nothing that could explain this high CPU utilization. That is, nothing seems to be taking up more than a few percent of the processor. Yet when I open up the Resources tab, one of the two CPUs is maxing out almost constantly. It's not the same one very time, seemingly. Right now it's CPU 2.

Has anybody ever seen this? Any idea what to do about it?

Generally, rebooting takes care of the problem. But really, i shouldn't have to do that.

Any help welcome. Thanks.

Thank you, I'll try that. I'm using Firefox, but as I say, this doesn't happen all the time. Normally Firefox is not that demanding of resources.

I also noticed, the last time I restarted from this situation, the message "Bad scheduling from the idle thread" on shutdown. I think this is a kernel issue??

I don't know if it's related, but I also get kernel panics on occasion....

keplerspeed wrote:What browser are you using? firefox? if firefox is too resource hungry try opera.

Also, when the condition you outlined is happening, open a terminal and type:

top

This is a 'definite' process outline, and all resource use in this listing should add up.

After that, CTRL+C will stop 'top'. Remember that process number that is the number of the app that is using up your CPU. While still in the terminal, type "kill <app number> + <Enter> to , well, kill it. Then start top again to verify it worked. Remember to do CTRL+C again to stop top. Just closing the terminal won't do it; top will continue to run until you kill it, as well.

In firefox I have encountered cpu usage jumps when I have several tabs open and something like Fox news or CNN reloads while I am on another tab. I also find thunderbird uses a lot of cpu when it checks for email. I think I am really going to like Opera. I can{t get it to install on either one of my machines in Ubuntu butn it went right on my Mint install. Time will have to tell if I still have uncalled for cpu usage.