[gentoo-user] Xorg CPU spike with Firefox

[gentoo-user] Xorg CPU spike with Firefox

[Willie Wong]

Short time line of what happened:

On January 28, I was doing some playing around with eye-candy on my X
desktop, and started running animations (from Xscreensaver) as by
desktop background. At the same time I was browsing the internet using
firefox-2.0.0.1. The operation of the desktop was smooth and CPU usage
hardly ever went above 30% (sporadic spikes when I load new pages). I
was monitoring the CPU use because I want to make sure that the
eye-candy won't affect day-to-day operation of the desktop. 

On January 29, I upgrade firefox from 2.0.0.1 to 2.0.0.1-r2. (My box
is on ~x86)

I don't remember whether the web browsing experience is any different.
Since I wasn't paying attention. 

On Febuary 2nd, I upgrade xorg from 7.1 to 7.2, which also pulled in
an upgrade for xorg-server, libXdamage, and other things. 

Starting yesterday (the 3rd of Feb), I noticed lock-ups when ever
firefox is open. At first I thought it was the fault of the animated
background, but then I found out that it still happened if I started a
no-frills, barebone fvwm session. I tried almost all of my other X
applications, and none of them had these behaviour (mplayer, inkscape,
gimp, abiword included). 

When I start firefox, the cpu use for X shots up to 90+ percent (for
X, not for firefox) for several minutes, and everytime I open a new
tab X cpu use goes up to 90+ percent for several minutes, during which
firefox is completely unresponsive, and xterms that I opened have a
lag of round 0.5 - 2 seconds between keypress and character appearing
on screen. 

Basically, firefox would, every now and then, cause my entire desktop
to seize up for minutes at a time. 

I took a look at b.g.o., and the closest thing I found was a case
where the solution was to change to a sane set of CFLAGs an to unmerge
the known-to-be-unstable gplflash?? (can't remember the name, an OSS
attempt at reproducing flash, was removed from portage recently,
possibly because the adobe takeover of flashplayer). 

I don't even know if this is actually a bug or some stupid
misconfiguration on my part. Any ideas of what I can check before I
possibly make an ass of myself on b.g.o. by having a problem that I
don't really know how to describe well. 

Thanks, 

W
-- 
"The suit into which the man's body had been stuffed looked 
as if it's only purpose in life was to demonstrate how 
difficult it was to get this sort of body into a suit. "
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 58 days, 16:35
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Re: [gentoo-user] Xorg CPU spike with Firefox

[Rudmer van Dijk]

On Sunday 04 February 2007, Willie Wong wrote:
> On Febuary 2nd, I upgrade xorg from 7.1 to 7.2, which also pulled in
> an upgrade for xorg-server, libXdamage, and other things.
>
> Starting yesterday (the 3rd of Feb), I noticed lock-ups when ever
> firefox is open. At first I thought it was the fault of the animated
> background, but then I found out that it still happened if I started a
> no-frills, barebone fvwm session. I tried almost all of my other X
> applications, and none of them had these behaviour (mplayer, inkscape,
> gimp, abiword included).
>
> When I start firefox, the cpu use for X shots up to 90+ percent (for
> X, not for firefox) for several minutes, and everytime I open a new
> tab X cpu use goes up to 90+ percent for several minutes, during which
> firefox is completely unresponsive, and xterms that I opened have a
> lag of round 0.5 - 2 seconds between keypress and character appearing
> on screen.

are you sure this is only with firefox?
I have noticed this behavior too but due to lack of time I have reverted to 
use xorg-server-1.1.1-r4 for me it looked like every application triggered a 
cpu load of >90% by X. only I normally have a firefox window open all the 
time...

have you tried a rebuild of firefox _after_ installation of then new xorg 
packages? maybe that will solve the problem.

	Rudmer
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Re: [gentoo-user] Xorg CPU spike with Firefox

[Willie Wong]

On Sun, Feb 04, 2007 at 10:22:17PM +0100, Penguin Lover Rudmer van Dijk squawked:
> are you sure this is only with firefox?

so far this is the only app that I observed it with. xterm/aterm were
left open for hours, a few large image editing jobs were done with
gimp. Abiword and acroread I only had open for shorter periods of time
(several minutes tops) so I cannot say with absolutely certainty that
they don't cause the same behaviour. 

But firefox really stood out since almost every operation on it
(starting it, clicking a link, get a new blank tab opened, pasting in
a link, etc.) causes the CPU spike. 

> I have noticed this behavior too but due to lack of time I have reverted to 
> use xorg-server-1.1.1-r4 for me it looked like every application triggered a 
> cpu load of >90% by X. only I normally have a firefox window open all the 
> time...

Right, on my stable box everything works like a charm. And I think
they even improved the firefox memory leak problem between 1.5.x and
2.0.x, since now I can leave a dozen tabs open for a week or two
without OOM killer kicking in. 

> have you tried a rebuild of firefox _after_ installation of then new xorg 
> packages? maybe that will solve the problem. 

Yes, actually, just now I tried both 2.0.0.1 and 2.0.0.1-r2, so it is
probably a problem with xorg. 

Since you are also observing the problem, I'll try reverting to a
lower version of xorg-server and see. 

Thanks, 

W
-- 
"I'm going to do this in more stupid fashion in a moment."
~DeathMech, S. Sondhi. P-town PHY 205
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 58 days, 19:55
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Re: [gentoo-user] Xorg CPU spike with Firefox

[Willie Wong]

On Sun, Feb 04, 2007 at 10:22:17PM +0100, Penguin Lover Rudmer van Dijk squawked:
> are you sure this is only with firefox?
> I have noticed this behavior too but due to lack of time I have reverted to 
> use xorg-server-1.1.1-r4 for me it looked like every application triggered a 
> cpu load of >90% by X. only I normally have a firefox window open all the 
> time...
> 

another try at searching b.g.o (this time without the firefox keyword)
turns up http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=163827

I'll try disabling EXA and report back.

W
-- 
Four can study together, if three of them are dea...
    ~Daniel Jonathan Peng
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 58 days, 20:22
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Re: [gentoo-user] [SOLVED] Xorg CPU spike with Firefox

[Willie Wong]

On Sun, Feb 04, 2007 at 05:05:35PM -0500, Penguin Lover Willie Wong squawked:
> another try at searching b.g.o (this time without the firefox keyword)
> turns up http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=163827
> 
> I'll try disabling EXA and report back.

Well... this seems to be the right bug. Not exactly solved, but a work
around was found. 

W
-- 
10 pico farad is nature's size for a capacitor. If everthing else
is one, then the capacitance is about 10pf.
       ~Prof. Kirk T. McDonald, DeathEM, P-town PHY 304
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 58 days, 21:23
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