Thanks Chris.  Yes, the bash_profile is stock, but I'll try strace and
give that a shot as well.  Someone also suggested I see if there's an
issue with DNS so I'll also look into that.

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 1:07 PM, Christopher Tooley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I can see from your original email that I missed the
> "(and/or any other terminals I'm using, for example SSH from another machine)"
> part. :\  Derp on my part!
>
> Have you modified your /etc/bash_profile at all?  I would assume that if this is a clean install the software should be fine...
>
> If you feel adventurous, check out the man pages for "strace" and do an strace on bash itself :)  There may be some errors popping up that are not clear from just running it.
>
> -Chris
>
> On 2011-11-17, at 9:35 AM, Yi Ding wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
>
>