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
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>