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I'm having a problem with a Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS machine that occasionally freezes up for no reason that I can logically predict.

Once it happens the HDD usage seems quite high for no reason (normally I'm not using any software that "is using" the HDD), so I believe I can look for which program is doing that and uninstall it.

But I can't do anything like opening the system monitor, or Alt + tab the terminal to use top, iotop or any command, or anything like that.

So the only solution I can think of, is to log data of the processes, like HDD usage, memory usage, processor usage, to find the problem once I reset the computer and log back on ubuntu.

Does anyone know a way to do that, or have another idea for solving this problem?

EDIT: I found out today (almost 2 years later) that the problem was probably some bug with chrome's flash eating all of my ram. I was able to find out because now I have 8gb ram and 4gb swap, so once my computer started getting somewhat slow for no reason I was able to check the System Monitor, and the flash process alone was taking more than 2gb and started eating my swap. So I ended the process and disabled flash for chrome. Disabling flash isn't a problem nowadays because most of the stuff will work, like YouTube, Facebook video, Netflix, etc.

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For logging the data, you can use sysstat package from ubuntu repositories.

Install it by

sudo apt-get install sysstat

After installing you need to enable logging of data. For this, change in the file /etc/default/sysstat

sudo vim /etc/default/sysstat

from

ENABLED="false"

to

ENABLED="true"

Once everything setup, it will start logging the events like disk usage, cpu usage etc.

Use following command to know more

man sar

Hope this helps...

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