12.04 slows down when watching videos

[Colin Law]

On 15 March 2015 at 21:09, Jim Byrnes <jf_byrnes at comcast.net> wrote:
> Running Ubuntu 12.04, Firefox 36.0.1 and Chromium 37.02.2062.120 all up to
> date.
>
> Over the last couple of weeks when I watch youtube videos my machine
> gradually slows down and become unusable.  The mouse gets jumpy and if I try
> to open or close a window it does it in stages  and take 5 or 10 seconds to
> fade in or out.  I've tried Firefox and Chromium with the same results.
> Today I was watching a video on NHL.com with Chromium and the same thing
> happened. If I don't watch any videos the machine will run without any slow
> downs for as long as I care to run it.
>
> I took a snapshot of top when this was happening maybe it shows something.
>
> jfb at jims1204:~$ top
>
> top - 14:49:02 up  5:46,  2 users,  load average: 0.97, 1.60, 1.09
> Tasks: 202 total,   2 running, 200 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu(s):  6.6%us, 16.7%sy,  0.0%ni, 73.3%id,  3.3%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,
> 0.0%st
> Mem:   7920416k total,  5041248k used,  2879168k free,   334336k buffers
> Swap:  8124412k total,      172k used,  8124240k free,  2766816k cached
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  1810 root      20   0  301m 194m  24m S   27  2.5  14:43.91 Xorg
>     6 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S   23  0.0   0:17.39 migration/0
>     8 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S   13  0.0   0:40.38 migration/1
>    17 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S   12  0.0   0:32.61 migration/3
>  2338 jfb       20   0 1365m 255m  48m S    9  3.3  19:46.92 compiz
>    13 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    5  0.0   0:31.98 migration/2
>  9789 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    5  0.0   0:02.17 kworker/3:2
> 10189 jfb       20   0  510m  16m  10m S    2  0.2   0:01.11 gnome-terminal
>  1373 mongodb   20   0  341m  38m 8844 S    1  0.5   3:18.10 mongod
> 10008 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    1  0.0   0:01.23 kworker/0:0
>  2151 jfb       20   0 25544 2596  572 S    0  0.0   1:14.42 dbus-daemon
>  2433 jfb       20   0  590m  19m  10m S    0  0.3   3:06.79 unity-panel-ser
>  9788 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.44 kworker/2:1
>     1 root      20   0 24440 2352 1276 S    0  0.0   0:00.83 init
>     2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.02 kthreadd
>     3 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:11.34 ksoftirqd/0
>     7 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.39 watchdog/0
>    10 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:01.90 ksoftirqd/1
>
> I am curious as to what those entries for migration/xx are?

If you google for
ubuntu migration process
you will find an explanation of what they are.  I think they are more
likely a symptom rather than the cause.  What that is I do not know.
Is there disk activity going on when it slows down?

Is there anything unusual about your flash installation?

What does
apt-cache policy flashplugin-installer
show?


Colin