user '???'/'nobody' hogging my system..?

alexandr

alexandr

kosmonaut
i recently started using activity(process)-monitor, since i recently installed some additional RAM. every know and then a user named ??? shows up and is using from 0 to 767%(!) of my cpu.. the name of the process is often set to a variety of strange names like <!"_&/#?)=! or something alike.

what could this be?

i wanted to provide pics of it, but everytime i manage to get Grab going the names/percentage has disappeared from the list in the meantime..
the rest of the list seems fine, only displaying my user(alex) and root as responsable for the activities. sometimes 'nobody' shows up as a user though - is this normal?

alex.
 
Have no idea what is doing that to your CPU, though I do recall a recent post somewhere about usage reported over 100%. But "nobody" never shows up on my Activity Monitor.

Anyhow, the best way of getting the shot you need is to set Update Frequency in the Monitor menu to 5 seconds, and clicking Command-Shift-3 (or -4 if you have the time to swipe just the Monitor.)

Other than this nobody, is your system performing okay?
 
just now the ???-user "used" 56790% of my cpu. hmm.. strange. that was just after i woke it up form sleep.

the rest of the system is ok, i guess. though i think i expected a bit more out of getting that RAM-upgrade from 384MB to 640. that beach-ball is appearing a little bit too often i think.. it doesn't take much before the system gets awfully sluggish, but its been that way for a while now and i've gotten used to it i guess..

edit; i know managed to capture the two bastards at work, although they didn't claim much cpu or memory at the given time. have a look at the pics.

thanks for helping out!
alex.
 

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come to think of it, some app have behaved a bit strange the last time. for instance, if a wanna go the the finder via the dock i have to click the icon two times before the windows actually appear. this is when it comes from a hidden state. at the first click the status-line changes to the finder-prefs etc but the windows don't appear. equally, have a few other apps had problems if i wanted to hide them. toast won't hide at all it just "blurs/greys" out, apparently believing it is hidden but it still remains in the front..
 
well, i don't know. i've been having severe problems with my screen for over a year now, but i don't know wether if it is the logic board or the cable. i once asked an apple-technician over the phone and he meant that it most likely was the cable. he also said it would be quite an expensive thing to fix, so i left it at that..

maybe i should give it another go now then, seing that the warranty stop on march 18 aswell..

alex.
 
If I recall correctly there is a race condition in the way that the data for Activity Monitor.app is collected. In some cases it gets junk data but it is safe to ignore it. Now that does not mean that there is not something else which is stressing your system that is causing the race to be more prevalent.
 
although i'm not using msn messenger at the moment, the app shows up in activity monitor, status "zombie"... is this normal?

i quit the app, it is not like i jus hid it or anything, it is not supposed to be running right now.

alex.
 
zombie processes are no huge deal - it just means there is some resource that the process was using, that hasn't been released yet. It will be cleaned up soon enough.

It is normal to see mDNSResponder running as nobody, no worries there.
 
I'm running 10.3.7 on a 1.07GHz G4 iBook. Occasionally (maybe once a day), it starts chattering, similar to the noise when you're writing a large file to disk or receiving a large email attachment. Apps are slow to respond and everything slows to a crawl. Process Viewer shows a weird one-letter process assigned to ??? with nothing listed in the status column. The letter changes. I saw it go from X to Y to Z and then disappear completely. When it disappears, the chattering stops and everything returns to normal. The only app running this time was Firefox, although others have been running at other weird times. Anyone have any clue what this is? It's not terribly annoying, merely curious.
 
You might want to try turning on process accounting.

sudo accton /var/account/acct

If the directory and file don't exist, you might have to create them.

Then, right after it happens

sudo lastcomm

To find out what just went on. You might be able to learn something that way...
 
Some of these may be cron jobs running. Those show up pretty briefly in Activity Monitor and often have strange looking names. Though I haven't personally seen it listing the user as ??? that may be because the process runs and finishes so quickly, Activity Monitor wasn't able to lookup the user name.

mDNSResponder, for anybody that wants to know, is the process responsible for Rendezvous. So it's not a big suprise that it's eating some of the processor when you wake the computer from sleep - it's probably checking the network to find any Rendezvous services.
 
Upon further observation, the chattering lasts about 2-3 minutes. It happened twice today, once at about 10:00 am, and again about 6:30 pm. I was checking email with Entourage (which I do about 50 time a day), and checking Google News. Firefox and Entourage were the only apps running. And these are not "set" times as I've noticed it at other times on other days. I've attached two screen shots. Both processes captured hung about for at least a minute. They don't seem to be doing anything bad, other than hogging resources, but I'd like to know what they are. And even though they show up as using no resources, it's oddly coincidental that they only appear when the chattering is going on.

Enquiring minds want to know...

And since the processes give me away...

J=judy

J
 
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