Thread View: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
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Started by Bob Cook
Thu, 31 Dec 1992 19:20
I need help explaining strange behavior...
Author: Bob Cook
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 19:20
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 19:20
59 lines
4233 bytes
4233 bytes
This has happened to me a few times, enough so I'd like to understand what's going on. I have a Turbo Station running 3.0, 32 Meg, 240 MB disk, and a NeXT mono printer (which was turned off during this entire episode). These eleven libraries are NFS mounted from another NeXT: /NextAdmin /NextApps /NextDeveloper /NextLibrary /LocalLibrary /bin /lib /usr/bin /usr/lib /usr/pub /usr/ucb All of a sudden the machine started giving very slow response, slow enough that the display couldn 't keep up with fairly slow typing. Many "ps" commands over 30-45 minutes showed that WindowServer and Workspace were using almost all the CPU time. Here are the first three lines from a typical response to "ps axgu": USER PID %CPU %MEM VSIZE RSIZE TT STAT TIME COMMAND bobcook 151 51.0 20.4 25.4M 6.54M ? R 17hr - console (WindowServer) bobcook 157 38.9 9.3 5.58M 2.98M ? S 7:36 /usr/lib/NextStep/Workspace root 13837 8.2 2.1 1.92M 672K p2 R 0:00 ps axgu (More typical numbers for these are 3.0% for WindowServer and 0.0% for Workspace.) Apps running at the time: Date, Edit, Mail, Preferences, PrintManager, PrinterTester, and Stuart. Other information that also might be meaningless: The swapfile was at its minimum (20 MB). No messages were being put in the console at the time. One other peculiar thing was that just sitting and watching a File Viewer on the screen, with the cursor positioned on top of it, I noticed that the cursor "twitched" or blinked fairly often, like every 1-3 seconds, but not at a constant rate. I couldn't tell what was really happening; maybe it was being rewritten to the screen(?). One final piece of information: The behavior finally stopped, either of its own accord, or because I started NewsGrazer (that's the only action I took before it stopped). Can anyone give a Unix novice a clue of what might have been happening? Or, of something else to look at if/when it happens again? Thanks. -- Bob Cook bobcook@slac.stanford.edu Stanford Linear Accelerator Center N eXT mail okay h fairly slow typing. Many "ps" commands over 30-45 minutes showed that WindowServer and Workspace were using almost all the CPU time. Here are the first three lines from a typical response to "ps axgu": USER PID %CPU %MEM VSIZE RSIZE TT STAT TIME COMMAND bobcook 151 51.0 20.4 25.4M 6.54M ? R 17hr - console (WindowServer) bobcook 157 38.9 9.3 5.58M 2.98M ? S 7:36 /usr/lib/NextStep/Workspace root 13837 8.2 2.1 1.92M 672K p2 R 0:00 ps axgu (More typical numbers for these are 3.0% for WindowServer and 0.0% for Workspace.) Apps running at the time: Date, Edit, Mail, Preferences, PrintManager, PrinterTester, and Stuart. Other information that also might be meaningless: The swapfile was at its minimum (20 MB). No messages were being put in the console at the time. One other peculiar thing was that just sitting and watching a File Viewer on the screen, with the cursor positioned on top of it, I noticed that the cursor "twitched" or blinked fairly often, like every 1-3 seconds, but not at a constant rate. I couldn't tell what was really happening; maybe it was being rewritten to the screen(?). One final piece of information: The behavior finally stopped, either of its own accord, or because I started NewsGrazer (that's the only action I took before it stopped). Can anyone give a Unix novice a clue of what might have been happening? Or, of something else to look at if/when it happens again? Thanks. -- Bob Cook bobcook@slac.stanford.edu Stanford Linear Accelerator Center N
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