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I have a (rather annoying) process on my iMac that tends to get out of control.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to get rid of it. Much as I want to.

This process is fine at first - using 1-2 % of my dual-core CPU.

Then it happens. The entire machine slows down. If I can manage to get Activity Monitor open, I can see that the offending process is using 200%, even 300% of my CPU.

Not fun.

If I can get Activity Monitor or Terminal open, and kill the process, it will restart itself and behave like a good little process. For a while. The it goes crazy again.

Being an iOS developer, I'm thinking that the best way to combat this process is an automated assistant.

What I have in mind is a background process that would kill the offending process as soon as its CPU usage hits X%, say 50 or 75%. The the process will restart and become sane without my intervention.

Is it possible? I can write code, AppleScript, anything to make the machine usable again.

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    Is this a user process, or a system process? Have you tried nice on the process?
    – demure
    Jun 1, 2013 at 0:41
  • @demure Nope. What's the usage, and what does it do?
    – Undo
    Jun 1, 2013 at 1:18
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    nice can change the scheduling priority of a process. see man nice*. Example: nice -n 19 process_name
    – demure
    Jun 1, 2013 at 1:36
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    @Undo Under OSX anti vurus programs call more issues than they solve :) One of he reasons many prople recommend not using them
    – mmmmmm
    Jun 1, 2013 at 1:41
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    @Undo uninstall Intego antivirus, you don't need it.
    – demure
    Jun 1, 2013 at 1:45

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This post suggest using monit.
As you have given no details as to the nature of the process, I can't advise whether their suggested config would be of any use for you.

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  • Does that run on OSX? the blog is for Linux and the download page ncludes several Unicies nut not OSX. I ask as i is likelyto deal with system level APIs which differ in OSX.
    – mmmmmm
    Jun 1, 2013 at 1:38
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    As you can see from the download page, there is a macosx-universal binary.
    – demure
    Jun 1, 2013 at 1:39
  • SOrry I missed that the first time I read it
    – mmmmmm
    Jun 1, 2013 at 1:40

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