Mir

Dash takes a long time to open when running Mir on a netbook with i915 graphics

Bug #1195692 reported by Brendan Donegan
14
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Mir
Invalid
Medium
Chris Halse Rogers
Unity
Confirmed
High
Unassigned
unity (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

I've installed Mir on an old Samsung netbook (N310) with an Atom CPU and onboard graphics. Everything seems to be normal, expect when I open the dash the following happens:

1.) Press the Super key to open the Dash
2.) Wait 60 seconds
3.) A 'ghost' of the Dash appears (high alpha value)
4.) Wait 60 more seconds
5.) Dash is at last usable

Closing the Dash works at the usual speed (not instant but acceptable)

Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Robert Ancell (robert-ancell) wrote :

Logs all seem to indicate it is an accelerated X session - Chris, any idea what might be happening here?

Brendan - I assume this does work fast when XMir is not enabled?

Changed in mir:
importance: Undecided → Medium
assignee: nobody → Chris Halse Rogers (raof)
status: New → Confirmed
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

We used to have this kind of bug reported all the time. It's quite possible there's a performance regression in Unity.

Please try regular X and report if it's any better. To do that, you need to remove "type=unity" from /etc/lightdm/* and /etc/lightdm/*/*. Then reboot. Same problem now (without Mir) ?

Please also attach more system information by running this command:
    apport-collect 1195692

Changed in mir:
status: Triaged → Incomplete
Changed in unity:
status: New → Incomplete
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Chris (chris1974) wrote :

Same problem with ASUS EeePC 1000HE

Revision history for this message
Chris (chris1974) wrote :

scroll over launcher cpu load 30-50%
click on dash cpu load 100%

before installing mir everything worked ok

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for Unity because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Changed in unity:
status: Incomplete → Expired
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Expired
Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Confirmed. I notice this is still happening with the latest saucy images on netbooks. Generally everything works fine until you open the dash. And then you have *minutes* of waiting.

In the past we thought this was due to graphics load. But I think more likely is the simple issue that netbooks only have 1GB RAM usually. A large chunk is consumed by graphics, and the rest is not big enough to cope with Unity7's high memory consumption. So I think we're probably just thrashing. I have yet to confirm this theory...

Changed in mir:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
summary: - Dash takes a long time to open when running Mir on Samsung N310 netbook
- with i915 graphics
+ Dash takes a long time to open when running Mir on a netbook with i915
+ graphics
Changed in unity:
status: Expired → Confirmed
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: Expired → Confirmed
Changed in unity:
importance: Undecided → High
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → High
Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Invalid for Mir, BTW. This is a very old bug. Probably a duplicate. We've been aware of Unity doing this on netbooks for some years.

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.