High /usr/bin/X CPU Usage

[Chris Robinson]

Trying a different driver was going to be my next suggestion.

Actually, I had a problem with my Ubuntu 11.04 install (Unity) tonight.  After an update and reboot the CPU usage went up to 100% and stayed there.  By looking at top I could see that it was xorg that was chomping on the CPU.  I haven't seen this problem in Ubuntu since the 11.04 Alphas - thought it was well and truly fixed.  This machine is not my production machine  - just a test machine for 11.04 so it doesn't get used that much - but I can say that it hasn't behaved like this in the last four and a half months.  The only thing that has changed is a new Nvidia 6200 graphics card, installed about two weeks ago.


I had to reboot (for another reason) and the problem hasn't returned, but it seems a bit of a worry.

Chris.



________________________________
From: Robert Massaioli <robertmassaioli at gmail.com>
To: Pat Kane <pekane52 at gmail.com>
Cc: xorg at freedesktop.org
Sent: Thursday, 8 September 2011 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: High /usr/bin/X CPU Usage


Thankyou for that advice and I will be sure to do that; recording all of the system calls that it makes would be useful I imagine. 

I am still trying to solve this problem as best as I can though. The latest thing that I have tried is just upgrading my NVIDIA drivers to the absolute latest beta versions (285.03 to be precise) and so far so good. However, that was only a few hours ago and the problem probably still exists.

I will update you on any progress and, once again, any and all ideas and suggestions are very welcome,
I am going to get to the bottom of this,
Robert

P.S. I have also contacted the Nvidia developers and submitted a bug report and pointed them to the descriptions of the problems that I have been having.



On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 12:03 PM, Pat Kane <pekane52 at gmail.com> wrote:

It would  be interesting to see strace output of the Xorg process when
>it is in that state.    That is a bit tricky to do however, you need to ssh into
>the box to run strace, otherwise you might hit a deadlock, see:
>
>    http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/2008-August/038048.html
>
>Run the strace with detailed timestamps and do not be confused by
>"normal" Xorg activity.  You should practice running strace on the
>X server when it is not broken.
>
>Pat
>---
>
>
>
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