Need advice on performance troubleshooting

[stan]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:38:23 +0100
Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am experiencing a gradual performance drop problem --- having a
> machine running 24/7, after some time (say, two weeks) the system
> becomes increasingly slow, in terms of desktop response.
<snip>
> 
> The symptoms appear like something is leaking memory --- slowly
> (noticable only after two weeks of continuous running), but
> cumulatively. 

This probably isn't much help, but what happens if you log out when it
starts to slow, stop X, and then start X?  I mean, go to runlevel 3,
then back to runlevel 5.  If everything is OK again, it tells you that
the problem is in X. If it isn't, the problem is in the system part,
the OS.