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
>> 
>>