I see a similar effect here. I had been running with desktop effects disabled (metacity), and then re-enabled them (switching to compiz). it seems that gnome-session is continually respawning metacity continuously, chewing up lots of CPU. metacity fails quickly because compiz is already running, but it gets started again immediately.
I think the problem is likely in gnome-session rather than metacity itself, though I haven't investigated.
I see a similar effect here. I had been running with desktop effects disabled (metacity), and then re-enabled them (switching to compiz). it seems that gnome-session is continually respawning metacity continuously, chewing up lots of CPU. metacity fails quickly because compiz is already running, but it gets started again immediately.
I think the problem is likely in gnome-session rather than metacity itself, though I haven't investigated.