load >1 while 99% idle. The problem went away, and now it's back!

[dochawk]

And it's at it again . .

UPDATE:

I've started another thread in hardware at http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3106269.0

As described there, this problem is apparently a hardware issue; I swapped drives between two machines, and the problem stayed with the machine, not the kubuntu installation.

*******
As of yesterday, I'm back to a "floor" load of 1.0.

I did connect briefly by network cable instead of wireless yesterday (I needed to turn off the WEP temporarily, as I can't get windows to talk to it with WEP enabled . . .)

Once more, load staying above 1.0, but nothing showing as using cpu in top or ps, and top showing over 90% idle . . .

hawk

[dibl]

Re: load >1 while 99% idle. The problem went away, and now it's back!

Could it have been one of the "indexing" packages? I once caught strigi running my CPU cores up to 100% overnight when I thought my system was idle. Does avahi do stuff like that?

[dochawk]

Re: load >1 while 99% idle. The problem went away, and now it's back!

I really don't know anything about avahi . . .

However, such a thing should show up in the process tables.

Also, leaving the machine on overnight wasn't enough for it to end, and this went on for weeks, went away for a week or so, and is back again

[dibl]

Re: load >1 while 99% idle. The problem went away, and now it's back!

However, such a thing should show up in the process tables.

That is true.

[dochawk]

Re: load >1 while 99% idle. The problem went away, and now it's back!

I'm currently installing the remix on a laptop for my wife. If it doesn't exhibit the problem, I'm just going to rip out the current install and install fresh.

hawk

[GreyGeek]

Re: load >1 while 99% idle. The problem went away, and now it's back!

However, such a thing should show up in the process tables.

That is true.

I was surfing one day and all of a sudden the speed of my Internet connection (10Mb/s) seemed to fall off considerably, to the point that the mouse would pause moving across the screen when I opened apps or did other activity which took CPU cycles. Then I noticed my Linksys WRT54G wireless data light was blinking like crazy. I turned off my wireless and my speed come back. I turned it back on and the lights started blinking wildly again and I was slow. I used the System Monitor sorted by %CPU to see what was the hog, but nothing showed up out of the ordinary. I did "netstat -lp" to list programs that had internet connections passing data and I saw a couple connections with radomized alphanumeric names, which didn't show on "pa aux" or "top".

I had run Skype a little while before this started so I killed Skype's icon in the system tray. Didn't matter. I rebooted and the wireless activity returned to normal. Nothing happened again for several days. Then I started Skype again and the internet activity didn't stop when I quit Skype. Some research revealed that Skype starts a "SuperNode" on Linux which cannot be closed and doesn't show in the processes. Killing Skype in the system tray, then rebooting, is the only way to kill the SuperNode. Now, when I use Skype, I kill it in the System tray after I close the GUI.