I have Konsole showing 'top' and X is using about 2% CPU. I start gkrellm and the CPU figure goes to about 37% and stays there until I shut gkrellm down again. I have three active plugins: moon clock, sun clock and gkrelltop; also hddtemp is present but inactive. Deselecting each builtin and each plugin in turn makes no discernible difference. This is a 4-CPU Intel i5 box built by Armari. It has 4 GB RAM, two SATA drives using RAID and LVM-2, PNY Quadro FX-580 display card. Reproducible: Always $ sudo lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield DMI (rev 11) 00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 11) 00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield System Management Registers (rev 11) 00:08.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield Semaphore and Scratchpad Registers (rev 11) 00:08.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield System Control and Status Registers (rev 11) 00:08.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield Miscellaneous Registers (rev 11) 00:10.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation QPI Link (rev 11) 00:10.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation QPI Routing and Protocol Registers (rev 11) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak High Definition Audio (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 05) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05) 00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev 05) 00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 8 (rev 05) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak LPC Interface Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak SMBus Controller (rev 05) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G96 [Quadro FX 580] (rev a1) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03) $ emerge --info Portage 2.2_rc63 (default/linux/amd64/10.0, gcc-4.4.3, glibc-2.11-r1, 2.6.32-gentoo-r6 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.32-gentoo-r6-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i5_CPU_750_@_2.67GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.1 Timestamp of tree: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:45:02 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] app-shells/bash: 4.1_p2 dev-java/java-config: 2.1.10 dev-lang/python: 2.6.4-r1, 3.1.1-r1 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r8 dev-util/cmake: 2.8.0-r2 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.1 sys-apps/openrc: 0.6.0-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 2.2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.65 sys-devel/automake: 1.7.9-r2, 1.8.5-r4, 1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.20-r1 sys-devel/gcc: 4.4.3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6b virtual/os-headers: 2.6.32 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64 ~amd64" ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA dlj-1.1 sun-bcla-java-vm PUEL" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/lib/hsqldb" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/init.d /etc/pam.d /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--with-bdeps y --nospinner" FEATURES="assume-digests buildpkg ccache distlocks fail-clean fixpackages news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.easynet.nl/mirror/gentoo http://distfiles.gentoo.org" LANG="en_GB.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="en_GB" MAKEOPTS="-j5 -s" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_COMPRESS="" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage/layman/webapps-experimental /usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://serv.ethnet/gentoo-portage" USE="X acl acpi alsa amd64 apache2 bzip2 cdr cli cracklib crypt cups cxx dbus dri dts dvd dvdr encode exif fam ffmpeg flac fortran fxsr gd gdbm gif gmp gnutls gpm gstreamer gtk hal hddtemp iconv ipv6 javascript jpeg jpeg2k kde lame latex libnotify logitech-mouse logrotate lzma mad midi mmx modules mp3 mpeg mudflap multilib mysqli ncurses nls nptl nptlonly nvidia odbc ogg opengl openmp pae pam pcre pdf perl php png pppd qt3support qt4 readline reflection rss session smp spell spl sse sse2 ssl ssse3 startup-notification subversion svg sysfs tcpd tiff truetype unicode usb vcd vorbis webkit wmf xml xorg xulrunner xvmc zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" APACHE2_MPMS="prefork" CAMERAS="fuji" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en_GB" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nv nvidia" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS $ emerge -pv gkrellm ... [ebuild R ] app-admin/gkrellm-2.3.4 USE="X gnutls hddtemp lm_sensors nls ssl -ntlm" 0 kB
Created attachment 221411 [details] lspci -v
Created attachment 221413 [details] CPU usage as shown by 'top'
This bug doesn't really belong here, but gkrellm's upstream bug tracking system instead. It's a bit like "complaining" about performance. But letting the package maintainer decide.
The problem has gone away. I've spent some time tweaking kernel parameters and gkrellm now consumes a much more reasonable 2% of one CPU. I don't know what provoked the problem, but it looks like this bug can be closed. Sorry about the misdiagnosis.
