[Debian-eeepc-devel] can't get a word in edgewise during intense CPU jobs

[Ben Armstrong]

On 07/28/2011 04:51 PM, jidanni at jidanni.org wrote:
> On my EEEPC 702, I find say a few minute long
> aptitiude full-upgrade
> is enough to make the whole computer so slow as to even cause some
> xwindows to not 'hear' what I type into them. I can still switch to them
> with ALT TAB, but not it's often hard to get a word in edgewise until
> the apt stuff stops. Even apt-get update with a lot of pdiffs is the
> same. Yes I tried nice(1).
> So it is something about the CPU on EEEPC 702 + Debian sid that makes it
> do the intense jobs even intenser than my other computers.
> Actually top(1) doesn't say it is the CPU that is the necessarily busy
> part... Yes, I'm talking about after downloading, during the package installing.

Being IO'd to death? Maybe something degraded to 'polling' mode? Check
syslog.

Ben