For starters this does not happen very often but it is irritating never the less. Whenever I start firefox there is a strong hum and it seems that the CPU is trying to do a lot. Occasionally, the system also gives up and restarts.
Now, a restart does not sound good.
A top on the command line showed that gtk-gnash was hogging more than 80% of the CPU, not sure doing what.
Later I found this forum link too which seems to be about the same issue.
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-588831.html
Anyway for now, I have uninstalled the mozilla plugin with
sudo apt-get remove –purge gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash
and it seems to be working fine.
Posted in: Java
Luis Alford
Monday, February 7, 2011
hi great solution it worked like a charm thanks
hughetorrance
Monday, July 18, 2011
I have this phenomenon with Debian Squeeze and Iceweasel,I just use system monitor to “end process” gtk-gnash and its OK until the next time which is not too often.
F. A. N.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Another possibility might be using adblock or flashblock extensions in Iceweasel/Firefox: releasing your cpu from all those banners – and still giving you the chance to choose and allow some contents you at a certain point of time might wish to see.