[wplug] wild processes

[Vance Kochenderfer]

Zach <netrek at gmail.com> wrote:
> root     18337  0.0  0.4   3820  1196 pts/0    S    02:51   0:00
> /bin/sh /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/debian/createicon.sh xlock
> root     18340  3.0  0.3   3072   776 pts/0    R    02:51   0:00 find
> /usr/share/pixmaps /usr/share/icons -type f -iname xlock.xpm

Well, this only shows these two processes using 3% CPU.  It looks
like this script runs "convert" to resize icons - that's probably
what is causing the processor workload.  You could use the --forest
flag to ps to find out the parent process of these and then renice
that.

> Is there
> anyway I canautomatically nice have such processes limited in terms of
> how much CPU they consume? I know of nice but that is manual. Would
> like a daemon or something that would run in the background and catch
> errant processes as soon as it sees them chewing up my CPU.

The problem is that it is extremely difficult to come up with a
definition of an errant process that can be applied heuristically.
There are a lot of "legitimate" processes that will use 100% CPU at
times.

It looks like the script is designed to resize icons only once - if an
icon already exists, it should just exit.  If it's working correctly,
you shouldn't see this recur once all the icons have been resized.
If the script is repeatedly trying to resize the same icons, I'd check
into why that's occurring.

Vance Kochenderfer        |  "Get me out of these ropes and into a
vkochend at nyx.net          |   good belt of Scotch"    -Nick Danger