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#1 2013-06-10 18:14:19

jimwg
Member
Registered: 2011-12-11
Posts: 67

Xfdesktop runs CPU wild & hot just by triggering right-click desktop

Thanks to Ubuntu sites I no longer thought it was just me even though I reported this around almost a year ago. Just right-clicking for desktop not only kills the conceptual menu but hikes the cpu wild & hot, forget even activating the fixed desktop slideshow feature which locks the cpu to run high and hot even if you log out and in as different users which results in blank (gray) backgrounds; only a total reboot kicks the CPU off. I like Xfce's native slideshow, but this issue is making me resort to directly booting into Wallch, sidestepping desktop. I briefly once "re-set" the CPU by dumping the sessions folder and starting anew, but as sooon as you did the desktop or window tweaks thing the cpu got kicked and culling out sessions all the time was getting laborious. This issue ought be rated highly because it directly affects laptop users as a runaway xfdesktop can literally kill off a third to a half of your battery charge. Pity the unwary! How can I report this as a bug? The "bugzillia" panes I find online don't read my input.

Jim in NYC

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#2 2013-06-10 18:47:02

MountainDewManiac
Member
From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez
Registered: 2013-03-24
Posts: 1,115

Re: Xfdesktop runs CPU wild & hot just by triggering right-click desktop

Hi Jim,

I wonder if this is related to the bug that was introduced a while back during the fixing of another bug - but, itself, fixed very soon afterwards - that maxed the CPU when the desktop background was a solid-color one?

The reason I ask is that the bug which was originally tended to which caused the behavior was one that was related to the slide-show, IIRC. That and it was the only time I noticed 100% CPU usage "for no apparent reason" in my Xfce desktop.

Release notes for 4.10.2
========================
Xfdesktop 4.10.1 introduced a regression which triggered 100% CPU usage
when using a solid color as background. This is fixed with this new
release, sorry for the inconvenience.

Full changelog:

  - Fix hang when no backdrop image is selected (Bug #9892).
  - Fix tiling for some images.

http://archive.xfce.org/feeds/project/xfdesktop

If that's not it, IDK what it could be (but I'm just a regular junior-class (lol) user).

If it is the issue... It was just bad timing on my part that I encountered the bug; seems like I added some Xfce PPAs to my sources list during the short time between the introduction of the bug (regression?) and the fixing of it. Very soon thereafter, the updates fixed it for me.

This was/is on a Mint 14 (Nadia) Xfce 32-bit distro, which is based on Ubuntu's Quantal (not positive, but I think that's "12.10"). I'm wondering if the update that originally caused this issue has made its way to the regular repos or something, so that the bug/regression is there, but the quickly-released fix is not?

If that is the case - or if you would like to experiment - then adding these to your sources list ought to make a difference. If, that is, your distro is based on Ubuntu Quantal; if not, it may still help, but I'm not sure enough about how these things work to really speculate:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10/ubuntu quantal main
http://ppa.launchpad.net/xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10/ubuntu quantal (Source Code)
http://ppa.launchpad.net/xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.12/ubuntu quantal main
http://ppa.launchpad.net/xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.12/ubuntu quantal main (Source Code)

This brought several other updates to my system of Xfce, components, and related apps (such as Orage), but does not seem to have caused any problems other than the very short time in between xfdesktop 4.10.1 and 4.10.2 (which, again, "fixed itself" for me in a very short time with the next update).

Regards,
MDM

PS as to "Where to report Xfce bugs," I typed that into a web search-box, and got the following results:

https://bugzilla.xfce.org/
http://docs.xfce.org/contribute/bugs (towards the bottom of the page, it mentions that "if the developer cannot reproduce it, he might ask for a backtrace," with a link to backtrace. I attempted to follow that link in order to find out what a backtrace is but, unfortunately, that link is not a valid one).
https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce-bugs - Xfce-bugs -- Xfce bug report (mailing) list

Mountain Dew Maniac

How to Ask for Help <=== Click on this link

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#3 2013-06-12 15:18:12

markwilson
Member
From: Norwich, UK
Registered: 2012-02-27
Posts: 2

Re: Xfdesktop runs CPU wild & hot just by triggering right-click desktop

This sound very similar to a problem I reported on the Debian User forums: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=104730

You might want to try running the ps_mem.py python script at PixelBeat:

http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py

to see just how much memory xfdesktop is actually using. I'm using a laptop myself and I don't know how much of a drain it puts
on the battery but there sometimes seems to be affects like Thunar becoming slow.

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#4 2013-06-15 01:09:34

jimwg
Member
Registered: 2011-12-11
Posts: 67

Re: Xfdesktop runs CPU wild & hot just by triggering right-click desktop

markwilson wrote:

This sound very similar to a problem I reported on the Debian User forums: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=104730

You might want to try running the ps_mem.py python script at PixelBeat:

http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py

to see just how much memory xfdesktop is actually using. I'm using a laptop myself and I don't know how much of a drain it puts
on the battery but there sometimes seems to be affects like Thunar becoming slow.


Thanks for tip. Right now I occasionally make archives of my .config folder in advance of another hiccup by a desktop-triggered motion causes xfdesktop to corrupt it into running hot sand heavy. It's definitely something in the xfce4 folder that gets hit and screws things up.

Jim in NYC

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#5 2013-06-16 14:14:49

Psnarf
Member
From: Tucson, AZ US
Registered: 2012-01-11
Posts: 13

Re: Xfdesktop runs CPU wild & hot just by triggering right-click desktop

xfce4-session-4.10.2 - right-click desktop ---> xfdesktop increasing memory (ram then swap) with CPU 95%
When I have a 'doh moment after right-click and no context menu appears, I either run htop in Terminal or drop over to my tty1 root console and run htop from there. After a few moments of astonished amusement, F9 9-SIGKILL, then a new xfdesktop process launches and behaves as advertised, that is, until I right-click the desktop again. Repeatable. Things start getting sluggish when the xfdesktop process starts consuming the swap partition.
No background image, two-color vertical gradient.
Sometimes the desktop icons (Home, Trash) disappear, sometimes they don't; I haven't noticed a repeatable pattern regarding the icons.

--Baffled In Situ

(Edit: Corrected my current version of xfce4-session 4.10.1 --> 4.10.2)

Last edited by Psnarf (2013-06-20 14:58:35)

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#6 2013-07-04 14:45:03

Psnarf
Member
From: Tucson, AZ US
Registered: 2012-01-11
Posts: 13

Re: Xfdesktop runs CPU wild & hot just by triggering right-click desktop

Methinks 'right-click desktop' may be a red herring. Although that will invoke the runaway process and its two sub-processes,  I've encountered this while working, firefox duckduckgo.com for answers to a programming question or invoking iced-tea web plugin for executing java applets for analyzing high-altitude water-vapor images (http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/twc/satellite/16km_wv_EPac.php), among others. The desktop icons are visible, but the system gets sluggish. Htop inevitably reveals the three xfdesktop processes at the top sorted by %cpu or %mem. If I don't catch it in time, they consume half the swap space. I don't know why the oom_scores keep the processes in the running state, perhaps they're not getting adjusted. Perhaps I need to adjust the process limits. This happens only on my slackware partition, not fedora. There must be a missing library or something. I've examined the xfdesktop code, I don't think that's the problem, so not much y'all can do about it. As soon as I kill the initial xfdesktop, another appears with arguments, which isn't supposed to happen. Whatever invokes xfdesktop when the process is killed adds gnome-like command options --display and --sm-client-id.
Stay tuned for more. We'll be back in ten minutes with the correct time.

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#7 2013-10-21 17:47:38

Psnarf
Member
From: Tucson, AZ US
Registered: 2012-01-11
Posts: 13

Re: Xfdesktop runs CPU wild & hot just by triggering right-click desktop

Oddly enough, when I removed KDE and Mate, the xfdesktop process and its gmain subprocess /proc/pid/status:VmPeak stays pretty-much where it should be. The right-click desktop menu is back, I can't break it. I'm going to declare my participation this thread Closed. Someday, out of curiosity, I'll add those removed packages one at a time to see if the runaway memory leak presents itself.

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#8 2013-10-28 17:10:48

eric_the_idiot
Member
Registered: 2011-12-23
Posts: 58

Re: Xfdesktop runs CPU wild & hot just by triggering right-click desktop

Psnarf, (or anyone else impacted)
  Did the right click issue sound like this bug report: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10138
  It'd only happen with a right click over an empty spot on the desktop with icons enabled for that bug to trigger. Just trying to hunt down and fix all the menu issues.

Thanks

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