Stuttering problem, Debian Sarge

[Evnas]

This has been a problem since I installed Debian, but I went on vacation shortly after so I havent been able to post it, heh. Anyways, I've got a filly updated version of Debian Sarge on my system (specs in sig), and every now and then (seemingly random) the computer will stutter. It freezes for 5 seconds, 5 seconds, 5 seconds, then 10 seconds, and goes back to normal. I would have no idea where to begin solving this problem so any kind of input wopuld be most welcome.

 

[Christoph]

That sounds like the kernel's running out of memory and thrashing. (That shouldn't happen with 1GB of RAM, but if everything worked like it was supposed to I wouldn't be here.) Run dmesg right after you computer stutters and see if the OOM (out of memory) killer has killed anything. It will be very obvious if it has.
If the OOM killer isn't involved but the output from dmesg still looks relevant, post the last 10-20 lines.

The ideal thing would be to run top while the system is stuttering to see what process is hogging the cpu, but that may not be doable unless you can figure out how to trigger the stuttering.

 

[Evnas]

So far it seems to happen the most while im listening to music (using XMMS), but that is the majority of the time anyways, and it has happened while I wasnt (though it does seem more frequent when the music is playing as opposed to when its not)

Update: after running dmesg right after the stutter occured, this is what I got...

26 04:24:10 EDT 2000
sbpcd-0 [02]: Scanning 0x340 (LaserMate)...
sbpcd-0 [03]: Scanning 0x340 (SoundBlaster)...
sbpcd-0 [04]: No drive found.
sbpcd-0 [01]: sbpcd.c v4.63 Andrew J. Kroll <[email protected]> Wed Jul 26 04:24:10 EDT 2000
sbpcd-0 [02]: Scanning 0x340 (LaserMate)...
sbpcd-0 [03]: Scanning 0x340 (SoundBlaster)...
sbpcd-0 [04]: No drive found.
sbpcd-0 [01]: sbpcd.c v4.63 Andrew J. Kroll <[email protected]> Wed Jul 26 04:24:10 EDT 2000
sbpcd-0 [02]: Scanning 0x340 (LaserMate)...
sbpcd-0 [03]: Scanning 0x340 (SoundBlaster)...
sbpcd-0 [04]: No drive found.
mcd: initialisation failed - No mcd device at 0x300 irq 11
SJCD: Sanyo CDR-H94A cdrom driver version 1.7.
SJCD: Resetting: .......... reset failed, no drive found.
Trying to free nonexistent resource <00000340-00000343>
optcd: unknown drive detected; aborting

That means absolutly nothing to me, lol