music applet often uses lots of CPU

[Robin Sheat]

Binary package hint: gnome-applets

The music applet uses large amounts of CPU when rhythmbox is playing.

Usually (although not always) the music applet will be using between 30 and 70% of a CPU when all it is (apparently) doing is updating a string every second. This is much, much more than rhythmbox which is actually playing the music.

For example, a line from top:
  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 7143 robin 20 0 339m 38m 13m S 40 1.9 116:40.65 python

(this process is:
 7143 ? S 117:15 python /usr/lib/gnome-applets/music-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Music_Applet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=21
)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's not a gnome-applets bug

[darylb (darylblanc)]

I have also noticed this behaviour just now also while using music-applet with rhythmbox. On my Ubuntu 8.10 system it was also a python process that was taking up lots of CPU (~60%). I removed music-applet from my panel and re-added it again and CPU activity went back to normal.

I ran strace on the python process and got a whole load of this:

$ strace -p 6317
Process 6317 attached - interrupt to quit
stat64("/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale/en_GB.UTF8/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_GB.UTF8/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale/en_GB/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en_GB/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale/en.UTF8/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en.UTF8/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat64("/usr/share/locale-langpack/en/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0xbfcc88e8) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

[Robin Sheat (eythian)]

When I remove the applet, the CPU goes back down. When I re-add it, it doesn't necessarily climb back up immediately, but it will before long.

I also see the constant stat calls when I strace it:
stat("/usr/share/locale/nl_NL/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0x7fff66379c20) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/usr/share/locale-langpack/nl_NL/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0x7fff66379c20) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/usr/share/locale/nl.UTF8/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0x7fff66379c20) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/usr/share/locale-langpack/nl.UTF8/LC_MESSAGES/music-applet.mo", 0x7fff66379c20) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

[darylb (darylblanc)]

Marking as confirmed.