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#1 2020-08-21 23:01:26

rc
Member
Registered: 2020-08-21
Posts: 3

High CPU / memory usage in locked/kiosk mode on CentOS-8

XFce 4.14.1 (from EPEL) works nicely on CentOS-8 in the normal, non-locked-down mode.

After much effort, I got "locked" and "kiosk" mode working.  That was an infuriating ordeal before I realized xfconf continues running and preserving old configs even after the user logs-out and I update the configs.  A well-place "pkill xfconf" fixed that issue.

After that, several xfce services were consuming around 50% of a CPU core constantly, and over the course of 4 hours or so locking 8GB of RAM and causing system crashes.  The culprits primarily being: 
xfsettingd, xfconfd, xfce4-panel.  A periodic HUP signal sent to them releases gigabytes of RAM, but isn't much of a fix. 

I traced this further to xfsettingd.  Kill that process after the user logs-in, and the others drop dramatically down significantly to nearly normal levels.  The xfce4-panel process constantly using 6% of CPU while the system is idle certainly seems wasteful and not seen on non-locked/kiosk setups, but still a vast improvement.  I've tested disabling ALL autostart services, but no improvement.

Can anyone shed some light on this issue? Have you seens something similar?  Perhaps a known bug in the version in EPEL?  Or some pointers for debugging and getting some visibility into why these XFce processes are deciding they need to flip out?

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#2 2020-08-22 14:39:11

ToZ
Administrator
From: Canada
Registered: 2011-06-02
Posts: 10,948

Re: High CPU / memory usage in locked/kiosk mode on CentOS-8

Hello and welcome.

What exact versions of xfsettingd, xfconfd, xfce4-panel are you running?

Here are a couple of debugging links that might be helpful:
- https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/debug
- https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/debugging (valgrind would report memory leaks)

You might have found some bugs that would need to be reported.


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#3 2020-08-25 17:35:03

rc
Member
Registered: 2020-08-21
Posts: 3

Re: High CPU / memory usage in locked/kiosk mode on CentOS-8

ToZ wrote:

What exact versions of xfsettingd, xfconfd, xfce4-panel are you running?

# xfsettingsd --version
xfsettingsd 4.14.1 (Xfce 4.14)

# /usr/lib64/xfce4/xfconf/xfconfd --version
Xfconfd 4.14.1

xfce4-panel -> Panel -> About
4.14.1


ToZ wrote:

Here are a couple of debugging links that might be helpful:
- https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/debug
- https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/debugging (valgrind would report memory leaks)

Thanks for the pointers.

With PANEL_DEBUG=1  I'm getting a super-tight loop of errors from xfsettingsd that it can't set properties on workspace names:


(xfsettingsd:3706): xfconf-WARNING **: 10:02:38.380: Failed to set property "xfwm4::/general/workspace_names": GDBus.Error:org.xfce.Xfconf.Error.PermissionDenied: Permission denied while modifying property "/general/workspace_names" on channel "xfwm4"

Kill xfsettingsd, then I only get a much slower loop every second that it can't set properties on every launcher on the panel. e.g.:

(xfce4-panel:3477): xfconf-WARNING **: 09:56:42.665: Failed to set property "xfce4-panel::/plugins/plugin-1/items": GDBus.Error:org.xfce.Xfconf.Error.PermissionDenied: Permission denied while modifying property "/plugins/plugin-1/items" on channel "xfce4-panel"

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#4 2020-08-25 22:10:36

ToZ
Administrator
From: Canada
Registered: 2011-06-02
Posts: 10,948

Re: High CPU / memory usage in locked/kiosk mode on CentOS-8

Odd. xfconf is reporting that it can't write some data. What do the following commands return:

ls -al ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -lv
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/workspace_names
ps -ef | grep $USER | grep xf

Edit: Just re-read and noticed you are running in kiosk mode. If those properties are locked down, xfconf shouldn't be writing to them. That is probably a bug.

Last edited by ToZ (2020-08-25 22:17:17)


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#5 2020-08-25 23:25:06

rc
Member
Registered: 2020-08-21
Posts: 3

Re: High CPU / memory usage in locked/kiosk mode on CentOS-8

Thanks. I have submitted this info as a bugreport:

https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfconf/-/issues/15

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#6 2020-08-26 00:38:27

ToZ
Administrator
From: Canada
Registered: 2011-06-02
Posts: 10,948

Re: High CPU / memory usage in locked/kiosk mode on CentOS-8

Though I don't think that's the reason for your high CPU. I think something else is going on. Perhaps one of the developers can offer some assistance.


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