Thanks Steven.  I'll give those a try as well.

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Steven J. Yellin
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>    I haven't been following this thread closely, but have you looked in the
> log file?  For example, do 'grep -i error /var/log/messages'?  And the dag
> repository has an atop rpm.  You can run 'atop' to see if some resource,
> such as disk I/O, is being saturated.
>
> Steven Yellin
>
> On Thu, 17 Nov 2011, Yi Ding wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>