Yes, top is the traditional tool for checking on such things. It can be a bit tricky to use as it's constantly updating. One quick and dirty way to stop and start, of course, is the ScrollLock key. Or you can execute top like this for a quick, momentary snapshot: top -n1 |head I like that version of top so well, I've aliased the top command to it. Last thing I'd like to point out is all the raw data available for direct access under /sys/devices. If you have a particular problem, and aren't immediately finding a tool to help you track the problem, you can always write a script. Here's an example that no longer works for me, but that's because I haven't needed it recently. Should I need it again, I'm confident some tweaking would make this functional again. This script, when I needed and used it, provided me data every 5 seconds on the current loadaverage, cpu temperature, plus the name of the app consuming the most resources. Also, this script logged. At the time I needed this script, I was debugging my loadaverages climbing very high. If you've ever experienced that, you know that tools like top don't work all that well when one's load average goes crazy. Basically, the situation is that the computer can't keep up. That's why the constant on screen reporting, and why the logging. <begin code> #!/bin/bash #First we remove our old log, lest it grow too much rm -f /var/log/sysdata #Tracking load averages, temps, and perhaps top consumers while true; do LOAD=$(cat /proc/loadavg |cut -b 1-5) CPU0=$(($(cat /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon1/temp2_input)/1000)) CPU1=$(($(cat /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon1/temp3_input)/1000)) CPU2=$(($(cat /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon1/temp4_input)/1000)) CPU3=$(($(cat /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon1/temp5_input)/1000)) CPU=$((($CPU0+$CPU1+$CPU2+$CPU3)/4)) #Sort pids to greatest consumer for APP in $(ps -e --sort %cpu |cut -b 17-); do echo $APP >/dev/null done #Construct our display/log string LOG="$LOAD $CPU $APP" #Display it echo $LOG #Also display time and date #echo $(date '+%T %A %e %B %G') echo #Log it echo $LOG >>/var/log/sysdata echo $(date '+%T %A %e %B %G') >>/var/log/sysdata echo >>/var/log/sysdata sleep 5; done <end code> hth Janina Linux for blind general discussion writes: > When it happens, run top from a terminal to try and see what keeps your box > busy. > The process using most resources is the first one from the top. > HTH, Willem > > > On Fri, 20 Oct 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote: > > > Hi! > > On my old Linux machine when i have booted up or started linux i after maybe 5 minutes after booting up hear the fan goes wild. > > It sounds like something is taking up big resources. > > But this lasts for about 20 seconds and then goes down again. > > Can i in the syslog and or in other logs as well find out if there is something in Debian taking up resources for a short while? > > I don’t feel any lagging exept when i have loaded pages in firefox but that does not speed up any fans. > > It is very confusing to me. > > /A > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list mailing list > > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > _______________________________________________ > Blinux-list mailing list > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list -- Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.443.300.2200 sip:janina@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Email: janina@xxxxxxxxxxx Linux Foundation Fellow Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup: http://a11y.org The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures http://www.w3.org/wai/apa _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list