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About a few months ago I was using Ubuntu (doing something in the command line) when it started lagging really bad. I would hit S (or any other key) and like 20 seconds later it would show up in my terminal.

Naturally I killed the machine and rebooted. The system started working just fine, but about 30 minutes later it did the same thing. Now I'm forced to use Ubuntu in 30 minute spurts. I've looked at my running processes and none of them are taking large amounts of CPU or RAM.

Luckily I've dual-booted so I could still use my machine. Now I need to get this fixed and I'm wondering what my options are. Will I be forced to do a fresh install or is there another way?

Anwar
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Kredns
  • 966

4 Answers4

8

First install htop and iotop:

sudo apt-get install htop iotop

Then start three terminals, and run each of these commands in each of them:

iotop

This command will show you any process that is writing to the hard drive

htop

This command will show a more colourful alternative to top. Pay special attention to the amount of free memory. If this starts running low, you will probably soon see an increase in disk writes in the iotop-command (above), which in turn may indicate that something is leaking memory...

tail -f /var/log/messages

This command will show system messages. If some program crashes or such, more info may popup here. So when you start noticing system lags, check the output from this command...

Of course, non of the above actually solves your problem, but it might help diagnose it.

Cheers /N

Nicke
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3

Your real problem could be overheating. I had this exact same problem. All I did was elevate my laptop by keeping it on Dana's Text Book of MIneralogy (4th Edition). Your problem is overheating if you hear your fan whirring at a high speed. It is actually struggling to keep your laptop cool. Processing power is diverted to keep the fan going.

usersurya
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1

Check your memory usage - I run the System Monitor applet in my panel, and it lets me know if I'm getting close to running out of memory. When I run too many programs, I have similar problems - really slow responsiveness.

If it is a memory problem, try using top or the full system monitor tool that you can launch from the applet to identify which process(es) are using up your memory. Often you can remove it and not have problems, but double-check first.

Thelema
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0

You could reinstall the system, sure

Sometimes ubuntu does special things like that or just WANTS TO REMOVE KEYBOARD LAYOUT etc.

your problem IS a high cpu load (like cou load 2-3 and cpu utilisation 30%)

Also try to do that: clean everything you can find change everything that might affect your processor (also like cpu governor) Make sure your computer does not have energy saving options Clean cache (RAM, swap and everything else you can)

Please also add more information: Are you using an HDD or SSD Protocol your cpu LOAD and cpu UTILISATION (there is a difference)

I'm sorry I do not know all that commands to do that but I know all that is possible...

edit: look at that

Jan 29 21:12:18 lucas kernel: [   17.082569] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:20 lucas kernel: [   18.642992] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:20 lucas kernel: [   18.692599] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:21 lucas kernel: [   19.800059] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:21 lucas kernel: [   19.819674] EXT4-fs (sda5): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0
Jan 29 21:12:21 lucas kernel: [   19.852597] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:21 lucas kernel: [   19.930092] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:21 lucas kernel: [   19.980054] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:23 lucas kernel: [   22.038562] EXT4-fs (sda5): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0
Jan 29 21:12:26 lucas kernel: [   25.102579] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:26 lucas kernel: [   25.160090] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Jan 29 21:12:26 lucas kernel: [   25.200067] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid

what is sda5

france1
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