perl overloading CPU for no reason

Question

perl overloading CPU for no reason

Very frequently my iMac's fan will start running very hard and loud when I'm not doing anything to require it. In Activity Monitor the process "perl" is shown using up to 70% or 80% of my CPU capacity. If I select perl and quit it the CPU usage (and the fan noise) stops, and perl doesn't appear to restart unless I restart the computer.

I understand (barely) that perl is some kind of meta-programming language on which other applications may depend (?), so my question is this: Is quitting perl going to impair my system in any way? (It hasn't caused any obvious problems that I can see.) Also, if I really don't need it, is there a way to prevent it from starting up when I launch OSX 10.4?

iMac G4 15

Posted on Mar 19, 2008 8:13 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

245,189 points

Mar 19, 2008 8:23 PM in response to Paul Schleuse

Have a look at what is in these places...

System Prefs>Accounts>Login Items tab.
Library/StartupItems
private/var/run/StartupItems
System/Library/StartupItems

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Answer 2

Mar 20, 2008 5:35 AM in response to BDAqua

Can you be more specific?
What am I looking for?

There are no files or apps named perl (I already checked with Spotlight); there are various other apps I've installed as startup items, but I have no way of knowing which, if any, of them rely on perl.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

245,189 points

Mar 20, 2008 6:24 AM in response to Paul Schleuse

Spotlight only finds what SJ wants to find, I'd get EasyFind...

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/11706

Perl might not even be in the filename.

In those places, I'd remove all of them for a test, in the folders, just drag them to the Desktop in case you want to put them back... reboot.

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Answer 4

Mar 20, 2008 8:07 AM in response to Paul Schleuse

PERL is a hugely popular scripting language that's used primarily for automating processes and for text processing. Common uses: web programming, reporting/managing logs, etc. A lot of the Automator actions and core services use PERL.

Look at the hierarchical view in Activity Monitor for the process and determine what called it. That should give you an idea what it's doing and what will happen when you interrupt it.

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Answer 5

Mar 20, 2008 6:31 PM in response to J D McIninch

Thanks for the tip about the hierarchical view. However, PERL is listed directly under launchd, which is (with kernel_task) the top-level process. So nothing seems to be calling it besides launchd itself.

Considering that quitting PERL still isn't causing any obvious problems, do you have any ideas about how to prevent its launching on startup?

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Answer 6

Mar 24, 2008 1:15 PM in response to Paul Schleuse

Look at the launchd entries in these directories for one that mentions perl:

/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/System/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons

... launchd starts the processes it executes based on the XML plist files in those directories. The only wrinkle in that is that the launchd plist file calls a script that uses perl to run it.

Best to leave perl running, then do (in Terminal.app):

*launchctl list*

... and see which label matches the PID given in Activity Monitor. The one with the same ID is the launchd item that started perl.

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Answer 7

Apr 4, 2008 8:27 PM in response to J D McIninch

OK, of the four directories you listed, the only one that is not empty is:

System/Library/LaunchDaemons

I checked all the items there (both filenames and contents) and none contains "perl." So I opened Terminal and entered:

*launchctl list*

and nothing happened. Any more ideas?

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