Centos 5.5 VM has high cpu utilisation

[DavidA]

Hi

I am running a Centos 5.5 guest VM on a Windows XP host, using VirtualBox 4.0.

When I created the Centos VM, I found that it had a continuous high cpu usage. I fixed this by reducing the tick rate from 1000Hz to 100Hz ( I edited /etc/grub.conf and added 'divider=10'). The cpu rate was then low.

However, I find that sometimes the cpu usage rises again to 90% and the Gnome desktop disk icon shows that there is lots of virtual disk activity. No user processes are running.

Please can anyone suggest how I can find out which process is causing this?

Could it be something checking for software updates?

Best regards

David

[DavidA]

An update on my problem:

I disabled some unnecessary daemons (e.g. yum-updatesd) and rebooted the VM. The VirtualBox cpu utilisation stays very low (<5%) for an hour or so but then climbs to >50%. However, 'top' indicates that no process is using >1%.

What can be going on? Is it VirtualBox itself that is using the cpu?

David