Thank you everyone for all the good ideas.  I have class this evening and will be able to use your suggestions.  I'll let you know what I find.

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Blair [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 11:56 AM
To: Sergio Ballestrero
Cc: David Fitzgerald; [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: clients slow down due to unknown process

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"/usr/sbin/lsof -p $PID" will also list all of the resources it uses which is often a big help in figuring out wtf it is all about.

On 11/27/2012 10:52 AM, Sergio Ballestrero wrote:
>  Hello David,
> I'm not familiar with freeIPA, but anyway you can start by better 
> identifying the process.
> In top, get the PID and look under /proc/$PID - in particular  exe 
> will be a link to the binary, like lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 27 
> 01:41 /proc/1/exe -> /sbin/init
> 
> pstree -p -H $PID
> will help you identify the parent process, if there's one.
> 
> Cheers,
>   Sergio
> 
> On 27 Nov 2012, at 16:21, David Fitzgerald wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>  
>> Sorry for the length of this post, but I want to make sure I give all 
>> the information needed for someone to help.
>>  
>> I have a lab of 25 workstations running Scientific Linux 6.2.  User 
>> accounts are authenticated via freeIPA, and auto mounted to an NFS 
>> server and the users use Gnome 2.8.  The NFS and freeIPA servers are 
>> located on the same server (IP 10.10.10.10) which is also running 
>> Scientific Linux 6.2 and is a virtual guest in VMware ESXI 4.1.
>>  
>> During class when the workstations are most heavily in use, the 
>> students are writing Fortran programs with gedit and usually have 
>> firefox up as well.  Here is my predicament.  During class some of 
>> the workstation screens will freeze with no mouse or keyboard input.  
>> This can last for varying lengths of time, sometimes a few minutes, 
>> some other times for the full length of the class.  I can ssh  in to 
>> the frozen machines and top will show load averages of up to 4 or more.
>> The process taking up the most CPU is one I don't recognize named 
>> 10.10.10.10-ma.  The 10.10.10.10 being the IP address of my server.  
>> I have no idea what that process is related to, whether it's freeIPA,  
>> NFS, Gnome or something else.  Killing the process doesn't help as it
>> simply restarts with a new PID.   Note that the freezing does NOT
>> happen when only a few people are using the lab, so reproducing the 
>> problem outside of class time is difficult.
>>  
>> Can anyone help me track down this problem and fix it?
>>  
>> I appreciate any help you can give.
>>  
>> Thanks!
>>  
>> Dave
>>                                                                                                                                                             
>>
>> +++++++++++++++++++++++
>> David Fitzgerald
>> Department of Earth Sciences
>> Millersville University
>> Millersville, PA 17551
>>  
>> Phone: 717-871-2394
>>   
> 
> --
>  Sergio Ballestrero  - http://physics.uj.ac.za/psiwiki/Ballestrero
>  University of Johannesburg, Physics Department  ATLAS TDAQ sysadmin 
> team - Office:75282 OnCall:164851
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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