Feisty cpu at 100 percent all the time

[Ambimom]

After installing Feisty, processor remains at 100 percent even when nothing running. Reboot brings everything back to normal. Happens intermittently, but noticed it after software upgrade.

[jcfp (jcfp)]

For obvious reasons, it is essential to know which process is using so much processor time. When the problem occurs, please run the command '/bin/ps auxwf > ps.output' in a terminal and attach the resulting file "ps.output" to this bug report. Alternatively, using the 'top' command or some graphical system monitor might also be useful to gather more information.

[Ambimom (ambimom-yahoo)]

This morning and yesterday it happened when I was downlading the software updates; just five minutes ago, it was a radio podcast. I hope this helps.

[jcfp (jcfp)]

The output is the correct one, but it does not show any process responsible for using 100% of cpu usage. While some processes stand out with relatively high resource claims, such as X with 16.8% of cpu and opera with 26% of memory, total cpu usage is nowhere near 100% but at just over 50% instead. Are you sure the ps command was run when cpu usage was at 100%?

Please run the command 'dmesg > dmesg.output' in a terminal and attach the resulting output file to the report (may be run at any time, also when the problem is not happening).

Also try '/usr/bin/top -c -d5' in a terminal, it refreshes every 5 seconds and sorts the list of processes by cpu usage (%CPU column) by default; this makes it easy to spot which process is to blame if/when the cpu usage is high again.

[Ambimom (ambimom-yahoo)]

The next time it shows 100 percent, I will attach another output. However, your comments are exactly why I filed this bug report....namely there is NOTHING running that constitutes 100 percent of cpu resources.....I, too, check the system resources and see nothing taking anywhere near 100 percent resources....yet, the processor is running at 100 percent and everything grinds to a halt.

I believe that the phenomenon is triggered by the network downloads because that seems to be when it occurs.

In each case that it has happened, as soon as I reboot, it returns to normal behavior.

[jcfp (jcfp)]

In that case, you might also want to check in /var/log/syslog for any kernel related crashes, especially network driver related. If there's any, it will be obvious.

[Ambimom (ambimom-yahoo)]

It's happening again, as I write this. I received notification of an update and the processor is chugging at 100 percent. Here's the output of the files.

[jcfp (jcfp)]

No indication of any network related trouble in syslog, no driver crashes, seems the problem isn't in that department.

The only process using alot of cpu is 'beagle-build-index' which is part of the beagle package, a "desktop search util for indexing and searching user's data". According to the beagle project website, logs (if any) should be in ~/.beagle/Log.
The indexer is run from a daily cron job in /etc/cron.daily/beagle-crawl-system; you could try running that manually to see if you can reproduce the symptoms that way ('sudo /etc/cron.daily/beagle-crawl-system' when the problem is not showing).

Several other bugs exist that complain about high cpu usage in relation to various program of the beagle package, among others bug #89487, bug #59615, bug #104647, bug #64326 and bug #77106; please browse through them; some appear quite similar to your issue.

[Ambimom (ambimom-yahoo)]

I removed beagle with synaptic and within moments, there was a software update. For the first time, the CPU usage did not spike. I think you've pinpointed the issue. If this changes, I'll let you know. Thanks for your help. I'll keep you informed.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This bug report is being closed due to your last comment regarding this being fixed with a configuration change. This is probably a duplicate of another bug regarding beagle but it is hard to determine given the amount of information we have. Thanks again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Feel free to submit any future bugs you may find.