What is fuser and why is it so processor hungry?

Question

My computer became too slow and according to top fuser is consuming all available cpu time.

What the hell is that? What do I have to do get rid of it?

Answer 1

fuser is a command. From man fuser:

Identify processes using files or sockets.

fuser displays the PIDs of processes using the specified files or file systems. In the default display mode, each file name is followed by a letter denoting the type of access:

You can track down the process from command line with

ps -ef |grep fuser

It will show a pid and a ppid if you follow that number you should be able to track down the program that issued it (and by what user and by what terminal).

Or as said in a comment by Lakritsbollar use pstree. It does exactly what it claims: make a tree of ps ;) :

rinzwind@schijfwereld:~$ pstree
init─┬─NetworkManager─┬─dhclient
     │                └─2*[{NetworkManager}]
     ├─accounts-daemon───{accounts-daemo}
     ├─acpid
     ├─atd
     ├─avahi-daemon───avahi-daemon
     ├─bamfdaemon───{bamfdaemon}
     ├─bluetoothd
     ├─chromium-browse─┬─chromium-browse───{chromium-brows}
     │                 ├─chromium-browse───6*[{chromium-brows}]
     │                 └─18*[{chromium-brows}]
     ├─chromium-browse───8*[chromium-browse───4*[{chromium-brows}]]

Do you perhaps have a terminal open somewhere (on tty1 ... tty6)?

iirc fuser is owned by root and therefor will get all the attention it needs.

Oh and if you did not start it yourself... don't mess with it and only track down the program that started it.