How to isolate system freezes on Unix / OSX

Question

I am on OSX and my system becomes immune for a few seconds approximately every 10 minutes. (This gives me a spinning beach ball of death). I was wondering if there is any way to isolate the problem (I have a lot of RAM and there are no misses / windings). Any Unix / OSX tools that can help me control and isolate the cause of this behavior?

Answer 1

I would use a mixture of "top" as well as tail -f / var / log / messages (or wherever you are in the main log file).

The chances are right before / after freezing, some error message will come out. From there, you can start fixing your problems.

Answer 2

The activity monitor ( cmd+space, type, activity monitor) should give you an intuitive overview of what is happening on your system. If, as you say, there are no processes blocking the CPU, please take a look at disk / I / O activity. Perhaps your drive goes south.

Answer 3

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Answer 5

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