Slow graphics problem and fix

[gogalthorp]

Some times I forget to exit nano when editing/viewing a file as root via SU in Konsole and just close the window. This works ok if not root but if root the CPU usage goes to 100% This generaly is not noticable except for the 3D vidio which slows to a crawl. Looking at the processes in KDE System Guard I can see that nano is still running and taking up much CPU.

This may happen for other process started as SU in Konsole and simply left orphined.

The main symptom on my machine is that the 3D screen saver slows and stuters. Also glxgears will return low frame rates.

Solution when running as root under su always shut down any editor or whatever that you are running before closing the konsole window.

Fix if it happens determine what is eating CPU cycles via SYSTEM->MONITOR->KSYSGUARD
click on Process Table
determine what is reporting abnormally high usages

open a Konsole window
su to root
run
ps -A | grep nameofprocfromKSYSGUARD
in my case was Nano so I typed
ps -A | grep nano

this will return 1 or more PIDs (number)

run
KILL PID

Back to normal

[gogalthorp]

BTW I forgot to say this is on Suse 10.1 64 also noramlly running KDE