Mouse and shell become laggy after some time and progressively gets worse

[Curt Meyers]

Over some period of time after logging in the mouse becomes laggy and eventually unusable.

I generally have a lot of Chrome tabs open.

The time period can be minutes to maybe an hour.

I am not sure if Chrome is required to cause the problem yet but I have experimented with changed Chrome versions and enable/disable hardware acceleration in Chrome and that did not make a difference.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: gnome-shell 42.5-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-58.64-generic 5.15.74
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-58-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Fri Jan 27 23:12:58 2023
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-12-28 (1492 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 42.5-0ubuntu1
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to jammy on 2022-06-22 (219 days ago)

[Curt Meyers (boilerbots)]

I have been watching journalctl log for clues and saw this

Jan 28 19:57:49 tesla gnome-shell[455040]: libinput error: event4 - Logitech M585/M590: client bug: event processing lagging behind by 32ms, your system is too slow

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks for the bug report.

The two most likely causes of this problem are:

  * Shell extensions
  * Chrome tabs

so you should check each of those separately...

Please delete locally installed shell extensions by running:

  cd ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/
  rm -rf extensions

and then log in again.

Please also try just closing Chrome when it happens. Does the system recover?

After you have closed Chrome and deleted all local shell extensions, if the problem persists then next please provide output from 'top' and 'ps' while the problem is happening to show the top CPU and memory users.

[Curt Meyers (boilerbots)]

Here are more details:

For gnome shell extensions, I only have 1, launch-new-instance and I will remove it but doubt it is the cause of this problem but I can live without it for a while.

As for recovering, I should mention that the system does recover on it's own. The laggy system can last from seconds to perhaps 60 seconds. I have been monitoring for kernel messages and watching htop and have not seen any load increase or any process come to the top for CPU usage. Perhaps there is some IO or interrupt storm that I should look for.

My system has 6 cores and the CPU usage is low even during these events.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The attached info mentions three unsupported extensions so be sure to remove them all if you haven't already:

  '<email address hidden>',
  '<email address hidden>',
  '<email address hidden>'

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Next time the problem is happening please run:

  ps auxw | grep gnome-shell > psgs.txt
  journalctl -b0 > journal.txt

and attach the resulting text files here.

[Curt Meyers (boilerbots)]

My Journal dump

[Curt Meyers (boilerbots)]

gnome process dump

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks.

I can still see a lot of unsupported extensions, likely installed as debs. Although I can't tell if they are enabled. Please open the extensions app:

  gapplication launch org.gnome.Extensions

and try disabling everything you see there. Then log in again. Does the bug still occur?

I'm also wondering if Chrome is the trigger of this problem. What if you never open Chrome?

[Curt Meyers (boilerbots)]

Yeah I noticed the extensions are still loaded so I opened the extension menu and switched off all extensions globally. I have thought about using my computer without Chrome but I don't have much to do on the machine without a browser. Perhaps I could use Firefox temporarily to see if the problem still persists.

I will continue to try different experiments.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It was just to confirm whether Chrome was using too much CPU and/or too much RAM at times.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It looks like the mouse is wireless. Please also test with a wired mouse so as to rule out radio interference.

[Curt Meyers (boilerbots)]

I use a thinkpad keyboard that has the little red pointer stick in the middle. It is USB and shows the same issue.

When the mouse gets laggy the Alt-Tab switcher also will not come up or takes a while, depending on the circumstances.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Next time the problem happens maybe look at all processes to see which are using the most CPU and RAM:

  ps auxw > psall.txt

and then attach the resulting text file here.

[Curt Meyers (boilerbots)]

I might have to close this. After experiencing it over a few weeks I opened the task mainly because I saw a few other bug reports that seemed similar and it was super annoying.

However since my last reply on 2/6 there was a Chrome update that forced a browser restart and since that time the symptom has not come back. I can't say that the Chrome update solved the problem however it might have.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The bug would auto-close after 2 months if there are no comments anyway. But we can close it now and if you find the problem reoccurs (and that it's not caused by Chrome) then we can reopen it.

[Curt Meyers (boilerbots)]

Yep go ahead and close it.