Thanks for the suggestions Chris.  The reason I think it's a global
terminal issue rather than a GNOME terminal problem is that it also
happens when I SSH in from my windows machine (which is on the same
LAN).  Also, programs running inside the terminal will slow down, for
example top will refresh slower than it would normally.  It also
affects everyone who's logged in, not just me.

Cheers,
Yi

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Christopher Tooley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I haven't experienced this myself, but I can offer some possible troubleshooting tips :)
>
> See if it happens in xterm as well. If so, it might have something to do with your bashrc or bash_profile (if you're using bash, that is, others have different preference files)
>
> If it doesn't slow down in xterm, try konsole to double check that it's something up with gnome-terminal and/or launch gnome-terminal from xterm, there may be some error statements being flushed to STDIN that may help diagnose it...
>
> -Chris
>
> On 2011-11-17, at 6:02 AM, Yi Ding wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> First time scientific linux user.  I'm having a strange issue that I
>> haven't seen on any other installation.  Basically at random
>> intervals, my GNOME Terminal (and/or any other terminals I'm using,
>> for example SSH from another machine) slows down to a crawl.  This
>> slowness doesn't seem to affect my GUI applications, and when I run
>> top, there's no signs of high cpu or memory usage.
>>
>> Has anyone else had this problem?  Can someone suggest a solution?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Yi
>
>