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.
Best Answer
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.