top -o CPU, I saw that the
process resulting in the excessive CPU usage was SymDaemon, which
is a background process associated with Symantec™ antivirus
software. Symantec Endpoint Protection is installed on the system; there
is a Symantec Solutions folder beneath the Applications
folder with Symantec Endpoint Protection in the folder.$ top -o cpu Processes: 184 total, 3 running, 10 stuck, 171 sleeping, 1012 threads 14:07:23 Load Avg: 3.79, 3.30, 3.19 CPU usage: 25.79% user, 61.50% sys, 12.69% idle SharedLibs: 12M resident, 5320K data, 0B linkedit. MemRegions: 93215 total, 2348M resident, 43M private, 438M shared. PhysMem: 930M wired, 1578M active, 1573M inactive, 4081M used, 14M free. VM: 453G vsize, 1053M framework vsize, 14111927(149) pageins, 8963237(1) pageouts. Networks: packets: 4877708/3123M in, 4325689/2363M out. Disks: 9423947/173G read, 5127260/124G written. PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #WQ #PORT #MREG RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VPRVT 70 SymDaemon 109.6 27:41:04 19/2 4/1 159 458 24M- 2636K 28M- 386M 23778 top 18.4 00:17.68 1/1 0 32 33 1780K 216K 2528K 18M 327 Terminal 17.9 05:20.50 11 5 241 502 17M 11M 36M+ 42M 99 WindowServer 7.5 02:20:46 4 1 709 9057+ 21M+ 144M 126M+ 96M+ 0 kernel_task 2.1 02:49:32 82/2 0 2 947 29M 0B 490M- 103M 98088 activitymoni 1.8 13:18.67 1 0 29 33 2196K 216K 2720K 29M 86324 WebProcess 1.7 14:40.71 10 3 199 3562 155M 36M 179M 553M 331 firefox 1.5 04:07:40 54 3 257 1852 55M 11M 84M 289M 86344 WebProcess 1.5 10:05.76 10 3 152 1906 81M- 36M 101M- 313M 280 distnoted 0.9 01:46:32 5 4 217- 53- 7328K- 912K 7568K- 29M- 86354 WebProcess 0.9 21:11.73 16 1 261 8506 455M+ 82M 472M+ 964M 86332 WebProcess 0.4 01:09.07 10 3 203 1980 112M 69M 155M 329M 86326 WebProcess 0.4 11:46.40 11 3 217 7679 242M 82M 362M- 651M 86345 WebProcess 0.3 03:56.04 8 1 151 7380 40M+ 41M 56M 764M 86351 WebProcess 0.3 03:49.47 8 1 147- 556- 18M- 38M 34M- 205M- 86353 WebProcess 0.2 14:44.49 10 3 200 5178 226M 37M 250M 675M
The Activity Monitor program in Applications/Utilities also showed SymDaemon as the culprit for the poor performance due to high CPU usage.
When I clicked on the process to select it in Activity Monitor and then clicked on Inspect, I saw the following:
When I checked on the CPU temperature with osx-cpu-temp, I saw the following:
$ osx-cpu-temp 73.2°C $ osx-cpu-temp -F 163.8°F
When I checked on fan speed with smcFanControl, I saw the following:
$ smcFanControl.app/Contents/Resources/smc -f
Total fans in system: 2
Fan #0:
Actual speed : 6196
Minimum speed: 2000
Maximum speed: 6200
Safe speed : 0
Target speed : 6200
Mode : auto
Fan #1:
Actual speed : 6204
Minimum speed: 2000
Maximum speed: 6200
Safe speed : 0
Target speed : 6200
Mode : autoI used the Activity Monitor app to kill the errant process by clicking on the SymDaemon process to select it and then clicking on the Quit Process button. I then clicked on the Quit button to kill the process.
That reduced the CPU utilization and the fan noise stopped after a few seconds.
When I checked the CPU temperature, I found it had decreased 16.3°C.
$ osx-cpu-temp 56.9°C vpn-128-154-226-104:SymDaemon jmcamer1$ osx-cpu-temp -F 134.8°F
I also found the fan speed revolutions per minute (RPM) had decreased considerably:
$ /Applications/smcFanControl.app/Contents/Resources/smc -f
Total fans in system: 2
Fan #0:
Actual speed : 1999
Minimum speed: 2000
Maximum speed: 6200
Safe speed : 0
Target speed : 2000
Mode : auto
Fan #1:
Actual speed : 2001
Minimum speed: 2000
Maximum speed: 6200
Safe speed : 0
Target speed : 2000
Mode : auto
Created: Friday November 20, 2015