Haines Brown said on Sun, 1 Aug 2021 07:16:00 -0400

>On Sun, Aug 01, 2021 at 02:54:55AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>> Haines Brown said on Sat, 31 Jul 2021 21:54:56 -0400
>>
>> >Sorry for the ambivalent subject line.
>> >
>> >I'm running Beowulf with Fluxbox window manager but without a
>> >desktop environment. Without knowing what might have triggered it,
>> >I find it laborious to start some applications from CLI. What
>> >happens is that I get a hang (little spiral rotates) until I kill
>> >the process with Crtl-g and try again.
>>
>> Do you mean Ctrl-c ? I've never heard of ctrl-g killing commands.
>>
>> [snip other weird intermittent symptoms]
>>
>> I'd start by collecting data:
>>
>> df -h >> data.txt
>
>No problems here. No partition is more than 50%

OK, full partition ruled out.

>
>> vmstat -S M >> data.txt
>
>I don't know how to interpret all the info. But here it is:
>

>procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io----
>-system-------cpu-----
> r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us
> sy id wa st 2  3      0    162   5852   6370    0    0    85    95
> 3    9 10  3 86  1  0

You have plenty of available RAM, so that's not the problem.

>
>Nothing here strike my eye
>
>> Also, run the htop command to see whether you're maxing out your
>> CPUs.
>
>Wow! Don't like this result, It looks like for the four cores, number
>is running 100%. The others are low. Currently my machine is running
>an automatic bacvkup. I do not have a swap partition. Mem is
>3.7G/15.6G
>
>In the display of processes, CPU runs 98-101% I'm runnng two sessions
>of emacs on two virtyual desktops and it is the second that is hogging
>CPU.
>
>I see that in fiddling to start balance program, I left it in hung
>state (spinning spiral). So now use C-g to stop the process. This
>is enacs for stop the process. Ctl-c has no effect on the emacs
>process. I now look to see what effect stopping the process has.
>
>Sure enough. My CPU is back to normal. My backup running in
>the background calls occasionally for as much as 30%.

The preceding paragraphs have a lot of articles (such as "it"), so I
can't be sure what you're saying, but it sounds like "the balance
program" is hogging CPU, so don't use it, or at least don't use it when
you're doing other work. If you're the author of the balance program,
find out what about it is hogging all CPU.

>
>So I'm back to the problem that I cannot run ~/.backup.bal without. It
>may be that this is a problem specific to emacs.

I'm guessing backup.bal is a backup program. I'd advise every night b4
bed, you shut down all other programs and just run backup.bal.

>
>I'll take the further steps if you think wise.

I think it's wise to go further unless your computer is hopefully
antiquated, which I doubt given as it seems like you have about 16GB
RAM, or you suspect that your hardware's broken. Can you find a
substitute for your "balance program"?

I computer with 16GB RAM and a processor made in the last 10 years
should be fairly snappy with fluxbox.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques