syslogd needs up to 106% CPU, launchd 60% CPU

[jue]

Hello,

today I saw at the activitymonitor that a process called syslogd used 106% CPU sometimes, even when Numerology was the only programm and it was stopped.

Another process called launchd was going to 60% some times.

Anyone else saw this??

best
jue

[adamj]

This kind of stuff happens sometimes on OS X. There are background processes that run periodically for normal system maintenance, like cleaning up temp directories and old system log files. Another occasional CPU hog is mds (or mdsworker), which I believe indexes files for spotlight searching.

I wish there was a way to make it not do these things when you're working on your computer and doing something CPU intensive like making music, but sometimes it seems like you just have to wait for it to finish. I've heard if you leave your computer on overnight then these background processes will usually run after hours and not interfere with you working on the computer during the day. In some cases you can reconfigure your system to avoid needing these processes. I found a way to turn off the file search indexing and make mds not run, but then spotlight searching did not work anymore so I decided to turn it back on.

I had the syslogd process taking up a ton of CPU for quite a while a few days ago and I got annoyed and did a force quit. Didn't seem to do any harm but I'm not sure if this is a good idea...

It is possible that your system could get misconfigured and these processes go haywire. If these processes are running all the time and won't stop, you should google for more info on things to try to fix it. But if they just run once in a while that's probably normal.

Adam

[jim]

I've seen that happen also, but very rarely. Whenever I plan to do a "media work session" (Numerology, Final Cut, etc), I always do a reboot, just to get a clean slate.

Jim