System degradation requiring rebooting every day...

[Jeffrey Racine]

Hi.

The following problem appears on my system with unsettling regularity:
upon boot, everything is `smooth'... quick response, smooth cursor
movement etc. However, after being up for a while (e.g. less than 12
hours) the system performance has so degraded as to require rebooting.
By this I mean that the cursor is so `jumpy' as to make the mouse
unusable, and the processor is pegged at 30% when the system ought to be
idle.

The system is idle (evolution only running) and the load average is 2-3,
while I also notice that libgtop_server is consuming a significant
amount of overhead when the system is truly idle if this helps. I
include output from top below if that helps.

I am running 5.0 CURRENT, Gnome 2, have kept current with ports on a
daily basis. This problem has existed for over three weeks through
constant upgrades of ports and current.

The system is a Dell OptiPlex GX110, i810 chipset, 512 MB Ram.

Thanks for any advice! Here is my system info.


uname -a 

FreeBSD x1-6-00-b0-d0-c2-67-0e.twcny.rr.com 5.0-CURRENT FreeBSD
5.0-CURRENT #0:
Fri Apr 18 06:24:01 EDT 2003    
root at x1-6-00-b0-d0-c2-67-0e.twcny.rr.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC 
i386

env
SSH_AGENT_PID=539
SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
TERM=xterm
WINDOWID=18874405
OLDPWD=/home/jracine
USER=jracine
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/pgplot
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-f6pu0sMf/agent.532
USERNAME=jracine
SESSION_MANAGER=local/x1-6-00-b0-d0-c2-67-0e.twcny.rr.com:/tmp/.ICE-unix/532
FTP_PASSIVE_MODE=YES
MAIL=/var/mail/jracine
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/jracine/bin:.:./:/home/jracine/bin:/home/jracine/C/nn/gcc:/home/jracine/C/n_alpha/gcc::.:./:
BLOCKSIZE=K
PWD=/root
LANG=en_US.ISO_8859-1
GDM_LANG=en_US.ISO_8859-1
LAMRSH=ssh -x
TZ=EST5EDT
PS1=[\u]\w/
GDMSESSION=Gnome
SHLVL=2
HOME=/root
TEXEDIT=emacs +%d %s
GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=Default
PGPLOT_DIR=/usr/local/pgplot/
BASH_ENV=/root/.bashrc
LOGNAME=jracine
DISPLAY=:0.0
XAUTHORITY=/home/jracine/.Xauthority
COLORTERM=gnome-terminal
_=/usr/bin/env

top

last pid: 28081;  load averages:  2.76,  2.63,  2.34  up 0+15:40:22   
09:43:01
50 processes:  3 running, 47 sleeping
 
Mem: 104M Active, 261M Inact, 74M Wired, 14M Cache, 60M Buf, 41M Free
Swap: 1006M Total, 1006M Free
 
 
  PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU    CPU
COMMAND
  588 jracine   -8    0  2112K   872K piperd 153:06 26.61% 26.61%
libgtop_serve
  481 root      97    0 85264K 82536K RUN     11:55  0.63%  0.63%
XFree86
  566 jracine   97    0 17812K 12008K RUN      1:17  0.44%  0.44%
gnome-termina
  585 jracine   96    0 14380K  9920K select   4:01  0.05%  0.05%
multiload-app
  564 jracine   96    0 16956K 12868K select   8:56  0.00%  0.00%
gnome-panel
  449 root      96    0  1188K   624K select   3:40  0.00%  0.00% moused
  560 jracine   96    0 11620K  8272K select   1:41  0.00%  0.00%
metacity
  562 jracine   96    0 18188K 13148K select   1:20  0.00%  0.00%
nautilus
  587 jracine   96    0 13400K  8628K select   0:51  0.00%  0.00%
mixer_applet2
  642 jracine   96    0 21424K  9524K select   0:48  0.00%  0.00% wombat
  196 root      96    0  1184K   624K select   0:44  0.00%  0.00%
dhclient
  558 jracine   96    0  7132K  4116K select   0:35  0.00%  0.00%
gnome-smproxy
  664 jracine   96    0 18928K  8672K select   0:13  0.00%  0.00%
evolution-ala
  555 jracine   96    0  3152K  2196K select   0:08  0.00%  0.00%
xscreensaver
  398 root      96    0  3448K  1976K select   0:07  0.00%  0.00%
sendmail
  579 jracine   96    0 14568K 10608K select   0:04  0.00%  0.00%
stickynotes_a
  581 jracine   96    0 14600K  9900K select   0:04  0.00%  0.00%
gweather-appl
  542 jracine   96    0 12224K 10284K select   0:03  0.00%  0.00%
gconfd-2





-- 
Professor J. S. Racine         Phone:  (315) 443-1630
Department of Economics        FAX:    (315) 443-1081
Syracuse University            e-mail: jracine at maxwell.syr.edu
Syracuse, NY, USA 13244-1020
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/econ/faculty/jeffrey_racine.htm

`The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
chance.'