What's eating processor cycles?

I have a thinkpad SL410, and run ubuntu 10.04 (have since it first came out), and with the latest maintainence update, my fan is always on. Even sitting idle with my router turned off, I check System Monitor, and something keeps pegging the processors at 15-20% usage. I look under Processes in System Monitor, and all is idle according to it.
Does anyone know how I can find the culprit? I run a live version from a write-protected thumb drive, have for a long time and never had any issues until recently, if that matters at all.

 

The only thing I can see, is it only happens after I connect to the internet and use firefox. So I'm not sure if it's firefox, or flash that is the culprit, but as I said, looking in Processes under System Monitor doesn't show either. The only fix to it is to reboot (until I connect to the net again).

 

Talin go into FF and uncheck hardware acceleration (Options -> Advanced -> " Use Hardware Acceleration When Available". It's intended to offload to the GPU. If the GPU drivers are not fully supported or optimized it will use CPU cycles instead.

 

I'm using 3.6.18, and don't see any such option. :\

 

Whew you are using an oldie.

Most Linux distro's are up and current with the other OS platforms. I believe hardware acceleration started in FF 4.

 

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I was strictly referring to FF. It's pretty current across the board.

 

Sorry, just meant that I was using the version that shipped with ubuntu. I was using 10.04.4 (the latest release), but had some issues, and so reverted back to 10.04.3.
I'm going to try 12.04 when it goes official, so maybe that might correct the problem.

 

This could just be a thinkfan bug, mujtaba pointed it out here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lin.../644634-fix-thinkpad-overheating-problem.html

I would recommend using htop instead of system monitor, since system monitor itself can eat CPU.

 

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

 

If you use htop, try toggling thread expansion on/off with the H (has to be capital) shortcut key (lowercase h is for help) in order to find your culprit.

 

Well the fan is on again, and I did as you said. It seems the biggest culprits are "udevd --daemon" and "/usr/bin/X :0 -nr -verbose -auth /var/run/gdm/auth-for-gdm-KDlNNp....".
Still htop isn't accounting for all of the processor usage. Perhaps it is just the thinkfan bug.

 

What do you get from the sensors command for your temperatures?

Do you have a custom thinkfan configuration file with fan thresholds?

 

Always at 41 degrees. I don't have a custom thinkfan configuration. I just run a live session off a thumb drive.

 

you realize FF is on version 11 now, and you are short about 100 security updates.

 

Yes I know. :\ We'll see what 12.04 brings.