Evolution hangs temporarily, for periods of up to 5 or 10 minutes, since late in the Feisty development cycle

[Chris Wagner]

This hasn't been a problem for more than a week and a half, as far as I can remember. It may have been introduced only a few days ago; not sure.

I am connected to my mail server via IMAP. I will continue to fiddle around, to see if I can determine if this is specific to IMAP, if it occurs under certain circumstances, etc.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. Will be hard to work on it without a way to trigger the bug, might be due to your network. Letting unconfirmed for now, that doesn't happen on my desktop and you are the only one who opened a bug about it, it's likely to be a configuration problem on your side

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

Yes, it seems strange that no one else has come across this; I was
surprised to not find a similar bug reported already. Of course, even
if this does have to do with my configuration, it's still a bug when
evolution locks up (i.e., it doesn't repaint itself).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you have network issues? Could you get a backtrace (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Backtrace) when it's hanging?

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

Hmm... I don't know if this trace will be useful, but here's what I did:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  chris@chris-desktop:~$ pidof evolution
  14787
  chris@chris-desktop:~$ gdb 2>&1 | tee gdb-evolution.txt
  (gdb) handle SIG33 pass nostop noprint
  (gdb) set pagination 0
  (gdb) attach 14787
  [... bunch of output ...]
  (gdb) backtrace
  #0 0xb7590563 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0
  #1 0x08068c60 in ?? ()
  #2 0x0816c420 in ?? ()
  #3 0x00000000 in ?? ()
  (gdb)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I assume there is some way we can get a human-readable stack trace from that (?). Sebastien, perhaps you can enlighten me. :)

I've attached the full output from gdb.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

I guess I should have followed the full instructions. :) I've attached the gdb output produced after completing all the steps described on the Backtrace wiki page.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The backtrace has no detail. Could you get one with libglib2.0-0-dbg evolution-data-server-dbg evolution-dbg installed?

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

How's this?

[ndelong (ndelong)]

I'm actually experiencing similar issues. Evolution hits 100% CPU and stays there for at least 20-30 seconds or more. I can get it to happen every time I click Send & Receive Email. I have 2 remote IMAP accounts configured (one is hosted using Dovecot & the other is Courier). I have a decent amount of mail filters configured to sort mail as it comes in to the Inbox of each account & the mail is moved into separate folders contained within the accounts. The only thing saving my entire system from hanging is that it's a dual-core (I'm writing this as evolution is hanging). I've got a fresh install of Feisty from this morning & ran all updates.

$ evolution --version
GNOME evolution-2.10 2.10.1

I'll see if I can gather more useful metrics & post them.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

I might also note that, I am attached to the same IMAP server on my laptop, which is running Feisty as well. The issue seems likely to be related to some configuration that I have on my desktop machine (?).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Did you change the view used to display mails on your desktop?

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 12:35 +0000, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> Did you change the view used to display mails on your desktop?

Can you elaborate a bit?

I am running with the "Vertical View", for my preview mode, on both
computers. I can't think of anything, off-hand, that is different
between them.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The view mode, if that's the same it might not be due to it

[Alex Kavanagh (ajkavanagh)]

I've upgrade to Feisty and I'm having the same problem. It hangs on Send & Receive after it has been running for a while - i.e. it uses 100% for increasing amounts of time each time you do Send & Receive. It is definitely evolution and not evolution-data-server. I think it may have something to do with Saved Searches (Search Folders) but I'm not too sure. It also my be due to going into different folders on the IMAP server.

My set up uses 3 separate IMAP accounts and then I use Search Folders to give me a combined INBOX. I also use a search folder that looks at every local and remote folder for items marked as important. I only check the INBOX of each account (i.e. check all folders is switched off).

Used to be fine in Dapper.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

I don't believe my issue is related to Send & Receive. I just did three
Send/Receive's in-a-row, and they all moved along quickly and as would
be expected. Also, I'm not sure that Evolution is actually using up
significant CPU cycles, on my computer, when it locks up.

I have seen other bug reports that sound more specific to your issue,
Alex, in the Gnome bug tracker and perhaps here in Launchpad as well.
You might want to have a gander.

[Corne Kotze (cornek)]

I have the exact same issue with Evolution 2.10.1 on Feisty hanging for a short while and then working for a short while again.
On average it hangs for about 20 - 30 seconds, then it is fine for about the same amount of time, sometimes longer.

I connect to a mail server via IMAP, my mail store on the email server is 296M, with no limit set to it.
There is also no space issue on the mail server.
When I disconnect from the mail server, no such issues occur, but the moment I do a reconnect, Evolution hangs, then comes right for awhile.
I also tried storing a copy of my email locally for when I do need it offline, no such issues but the moment I connect the hanging appears.

We are running on a 100Mb LAN with only one switch between me and the email server.
It can definitely not be the LAN as some of the other users who have upgraded to Ubuntu 7.04 experience the same problems and we are all but one hop away from the server.
The users that remained on V 6.10 have no such issues.
We are 10 Ubuntu user of which 3 upgraded and only the 3 of us are having these hanging issues.

See also a screenshot of "# top"

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 6261 corne 25 0 220m 28m 12m R 71.0 5.7 29:57.63 evolution
 6261 corne 25 0 228m 26m 11m R 80.1 5.2 30:59.53 evolution

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 09:15 +0000, Corne Kotze wrote:
> I connect to a mail server via IMAP, my mail store on the email server
> is 296M, with no limit set to it....

I don't believe my issue is related to storage space (on the server or
on my machine). It doesn't sound like you think so either, Corne (?).

[Corne Kotze (cornek)]

Hi Chris,

We are running on a Scalix server, V11.03, and I have found after I
stopped Evo and any and all Evo processes, I installed the Scalix plugin
via aptitude, my problems have all been sorted out.

That I did last night and I ran various tests of sending and receiving
large and small emails, sending bulk and receiving bulk emails, and by
bulk I mean about 20 emails send and receive.

I have not had any hanging issues since.

So in the end it seems to have been a plugin issue for me between my
client and Scalix.

It might just be as simple as that for you but that obviously I cannot
say for sure as I do not know your setup at all.

Hope this info will maybe assist in sorting out your issues.

Regards
Corne

On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 15:19 +0000, Chris Wagner wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 09:15 +0000, Corne Kotze wrote:
> > I connect to a mail server via IMAP, my mail store on the email server
> > is 296M, with no limit set to it....
>
> I don't believe my issue is related to storage space (on the server or
> on my machine). It doesn't sound like you think so either, Corne (?).
>

Regards,

Corne Kotze
Managed Services Support Engineer
SYNAQ (Pty) Ltd
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Web: http://www.synaq.com

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

Hi Corne,

I doubt my IMAP server is running Scalix. (I'm using my old university
email account, so I don't control the server.) I'll give that plugin a
try, anyhow, the next time Evolution is acting up.

Thanks!
Chris

[Oliver Elphick (olly-lfix)]

I also have a problem with Evolution becoming unresponsive for 20-30 seconds but only on one of two machines.

The machine on which it occurs is running Feisty on a 64 bit dual core processor:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+

This is a new install of Feisty

The other machine is a 32 bit processor: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+ which was upgraded to Feisty from Edgy.

On the machine where it hangs, evolution is taking up to 101% CPU and 9.6% of memory. My evolution account uses a number of folders, some nested, and filters to put mail in them automatically.

If you want debugging information, please let me know what would be helpful.

[Corne Kotze (cornek)]

Hi Oliver,

My problems stopped after I installed the latest Scalix connector.
We then tested Evo from another machine on Scalix, Exim and Zimbra and
it only hung on connection to the Scalix server when connecting via
IMAP.

So to us it seems that the problem is with connection to Scalix, this
only started after the upgrade to Scalix 11.0.4

Are you connecting to a Linux mail server or Windows Exchange server?
Are you connecting via pop or IMAP or with a connector?

On Mon, 2007-05-14 at 10:13 +0000, Oliver Elphick wrote:

> I also have a problem with Evolution becoming unresponsive for 20-30
> seconds but only on one of two machines.
>
> The machine on which it occurs is running Feisty on a 64 bit dual core processor:
> AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+
>
> This is a new install of Feisty
>
> The other machine is a 32 bit processor: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+
> which was upgraded to Feisty from Edgy.
>
> On the machine where it hangs, evolution is taking up to 101% CPU and
> 9.6% of memory. My evolution account uses a number of folders, some
> nested, and filters to put mail in them automatically.
>
> If you want debugging information, please let me know what would be
> helpful.
>

Regards,

Corne Kotze
Managed Services Support Engineer
SYNAQ (Pty) Ltd
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Web: http://www.synaq.com

[Oliver Elphick (olly-lfix)]

On Mon, 2007-05-14 at 13:24 +0000, Corne Kotze wrote:
> Hi Oliver,
>
> My problems stopped after I installed the latest Scalix connector.
> We then tested Evo from another machine on Scalix, Exim and Zimbra and
> it only hung on connection to the Scalix server when connecting via
> IMAP.
>
> So to us it seems that the problem is with connection to Scalix, this
> only started after the upgrade to Scalix 11.0.4
>
> Are you connecting to a Linux mail server or Windows Exchange server?
> Are you connecting via pop or IMAP or with a connector?

My IMAP is Cyrus on a Debian machine (Etch). I'm not running Scalix at
all.

Until my machine died a week ago I was running i686 Debian unstable with
the latest Evolution, and I had no problems with that.

I can cause the problem by clicking Send/Receive. In the log on the
server, I see it open all the folders within 1 second. After that there
seems to be a pause of up to 2 minutes. Then communication resumes.

Oliver

[Alex Kavanagh (ajkavanagh)]

Further investigation leads me to believe that it is a caching/data problem in evolution-data-server with saved searches/virtual folders. If I exit evolution and then kill evolution-data-server, and then restart evolution everything is fine. If I then start browsing back and forth between saved search folders and real IMAP folders, doing a few 'Send/Receives' as well, after 20 or so changes of folder the Send/Receive starts getting longer and longer until eventually it maxes out for 10 minutes. I've written a little script on the desktop that I run to kill e-d-s when it is annoying me too much.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

On Mon, 2007-05-14 at 15:50 +0000, Alex Kavanagh wrote:
> Further investigation leads me to believe that it is a caching/data
> problem in evolution-data-server with saved searches/virtual folders.
> If I exit evolution and then kill evolution-data-server, and then
> restart evolution everything is fine.

When my Evolution hangs, I can simply kill it -- leaving
evolution-data-server alone -- and start it up again, to get things back
in working order. This, again, makes me think there may be two (or
more) separate issues.

[Darwin (admin-darwin-mach)]

having the same issue...

using kubuntu. killing evolution, killing evolution-data-server, and restarting Evo twice seems to fix it temporarily

[Tessa Lau (tlau)]

I'm seeing the same symptoms with Evo 2.10.1 on Feisty. Often I see it while I'm in the middle of composing a message. I'll be typing away, and all of a sudden the characters stop appearing, and I discover that the GUI has stopped refreshing itself. CPU load goes up to 100%. I have to stop writing for a minute or two until the app comes back. This happens on several emails a day -- very annoying!

I thought it was LDAP at first, but I disabled LDAP and I'm still seeing the problem. I have two IMAP accounts, one on the local machine and one on a remote server. No virtual folders or saved searches.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

I don't seemed to have had this problem for a little while now -- not on Feisty nor Gutsy. I do have occasional lock-ups and hiccups, but not to the extent that I was having them. I'm not sure what has changed (?).

Does anyone have this problem on Gutsy? If someone is seeing this problem in Feisty right now, and he can upgrade to Gutsy, then that will give some good insight as to whether this bug has been fixed since Feisty was released.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

does anybody get the issue on gutsy?

[Geoff J (geoff-jankowski)]

Hi

I have been putting up with this problem ever since I moved to Feisty. It is just getting worse which is why I am now looking for a solution to it but it seems that one does not exist as the root cause has not been determined.

I also do not think it is an IMAP or LDAP issue but something to do with the data server as killing that takes the problem away. It is very frustrating when trying to work and time is limited. It is also not a good advert for promoting the linux desktop. Has this been referred back to Novell? Do we know if it occurs on other desktop versions or only the Ubuntu based desktops?

[Geoff J (geoff-jankowski)]

I also notice that when my machine hangs there is no massive use of the CPU. There are occasional spikes of activity but generally, the processor remains idle. It has just occurred for the third time in an hour so I am again killing and restarting evolution. Is there any informaiton I can rpovide to try to help resolve this problem?

geoff

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

There is no Ubuntu specific change to evolution that could create this issue that's like a GNOME bug

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

I am having this issue again, so it apparently has not been fixed.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Can someone try to reproduce this on Hardy?

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

Ah, yes. I recently upgraded to Hardy, and I have not had these lock-ups since. And, I did have them in Gutsy.

I won't be too quick to declare this problem fixed, however, as I've had the symptom come-and-go before. But, so far, so good -- since upgrading to Hardy...

[John (swiftredvette)]

I have the same problem in Hardy...

I can kill the evolution services and restart evolution, and the problem temporarily goes away.

It seems to be linked to moving mail with large attachments into subfolders, but I can't easily confirm this.

[Corne Kotze (cornek)]

I am now running Evolution 2.22.2 with all the latest updates on Hardy.
We are also running a Scalix V11.4 server and I connect via IMAP, but
all my emails are stored locally on my PC and not in any IMAP folders.

I have not had any problems since I have remodelled like the above.

On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 22:39 +0000, John wrote:

> I have the same problem in Hardy...
>
> I can kill the evolution services and restart evolution, and the problem
> temporarily goes away.
>
> It seems to be linked to moving mail with large attachments into
> subfolders, but I can't easily confirm this.
>

--

Regards,

Corne Kotze
Managed Services Support Engineer
SYNAQ (Pty) Ltd
Tel: [phone] OR 0860 0 SYNAQ
Web: http://www.synaq.com

[John (swiftredvette)]

I found the problem. I removed all internet calendars, and everything started working properly.

[Tessa Lau (tlau)]

I read somewhere that disabling the "mail notification" plugin could fix this problem too. I tried it and it has worked well for me so far. No more lock-ups on Hardy (whereas I had seen them on Hardy prior to disabling the plugin). YMMV.

[Jack Deslippe (jdeslip)]

Disabling the mail notification plugin seems to have fixed the frequent hangups for me in Hardy as well.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could anybody gives easy steps to trigger the issue?

[ndelong (ndelong)]

I can't give steps, but I had it happen again last week. I've been running Evolution on Ubuntu 7.10 (with current updates) for many months without issue. I had it checking (2) IMAP accounts. I added a third IMAP account last week so I could archive mail from one of the other accounts. As soon as I completed the first big move (a folder with about 30 subfolders and thousands of emails), Evolution started to periodically peg to 100%. It would hang for anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes at a time, and give me about 5-10 minutes of usable time before it came back.

I took the drastic approach and exported evolution's gconf data & backed up .evolution/ dir, and then completely deleted all traces of my evolution user data. I re-created all (3) IMAP accounts from scratch and (/me knocks on wood) haven't seen the bug. One thing of note is that this time around, I've opted to *not* cache any of my email locally any more.

I hope this helps a little.

Nate D.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

I haven't seen this problem in a long while. It could have to do with the fact that I generally don't make use of multiple IMAP accounts very often, anymore. (Evolution is configured with multiple IMAP accounts, but I usually use only my primary account.) I have also since done re-installations for my computers.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

changing to new, that's likely an upstream bug, could anybody having it send it to bugzilla.gnome.org?

[Tessa Lau (tlau)]

I can't tell you how to trigger it, but I can tell you that since I disabled the "mail notification" plugin several months ago, I have not seen a lockup since. I recommend trying to enable "mail notification" to see if you can reproduce the hangs.

[John (swiftredvette)]

From my experience, the factors that seem to lock it are below, and avoiding all of them will avoid the locking.

1.) Large amounts of email on the local file system, regardless of exchange server, will cause a lock. When moving a message from one folder to another, it will give status of "moving to folder", but after letting the application run all night long, you realize that it is locked. Only way to avoid this as of now is to manually clear the .evolution folder. There ultimately should be an "archive" utility for this.

2.) Network Connectivity - if there is any lag in the network (wireless flicker, etc.), it will lock, regardless of what you are doing. The backend process locks, and you have to kill it from the system monitor. Most common solution to this are below:
      a) clear checkboxes for both contacts and global contact list from autocompletion menu. If either are checked, the application will lock during the typing of the contacts -- if either list has 100+ items in it. To recreate this, you simply start typing the email recipients, and the backend process will hang

      b) synchronizing folders - if you try to do any folder sync (moving items, deleting items, etc.) while large mail is sending, the application locks. Attempt to move an item after sending a video file, and you can recreate the lock 90% of the time.

    c) multiple accounts - increasing the chances of the above, if you have for instance gmail, another pop account, and exchange, your chances of a lock are tripled --- the backend process may be busy with one of the other accounts when you either send, type recipients, or sync.

Avoiding all of the above will reduce your locking to about once per week, and adding any one of these will increase to once per day. Adding all of them will increase to locking once every 10 minutes or less.

There was a point in time where mine locked after every email sent... but i had all of the above. Looks to me like a "wait cursor" is poorly written.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

John, neither the number of mails nor the connectivity is creating lock for most users you likely having something specific in your installation triggering this issue, could you get a lock stracktrace using gdb?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!.

[Victor Vargas (kamus)]

I have same problem with Gutsy and:

* evolution 2.12.1-0ubuntu1.3
* Linux 2.6.22-14-generic

Evolution hangs CPU until 90-99%, so i have to kill evolution and restart for repairly for a while. Is very strange because i have others machines with gutsy and doesn't happen.

[Gordon McIntosh (mcintg)]

I seem to be having the same problem with Evolution 2.24.3 under Ubuntu (Gnome version 2.24.1) Linux 2.6.27-11-generic. The problem happens when I'm scrolling up through my inbox. Evolution starts consuming all the CPU and I can hear the disk performing a repetitive action. It wakes up again after about 5 minutes. In the status bar it shows "Retrieving message nnnn (...)" and then it wakes up and displays the message - my inbox is fairly large (about 3500 items).