'yes' eating cpu

[woxorz]

The root user is spawning multiple instances of 'yes' in the background via launchd eventually using up all of the cpu and causing the system to overheat.

It doesn't seem to be related to any specific program I am running - at least I am not seeing a pattern. It happens even when I am not using the computer.

Running 10.6.8 on a MacBook4,1
This is a fairly new installation. ~1 week old. Restored from time machine.

I did a reinstall because my windowserver kept crashing.

Any ideas?

 

[larkost]

I am not aware of any system function that would need to use the 'yes' command, as it tends to only be useful in really hacky/sloppy scripts. I would hop over into Activity Monitor.app and select "All Processes, Hierarchically" and find out what process is calling this. I would bet that it is nothing good.