NetworkManager high CPU usage with Human theme displaying wifi list

[Gergely Janossy]

Binary package hint: network-manager

When I click on the NetworkManager icon sitting on the notification area, I get a list of the available WiFi access points. When this menu is open, nm and X uses up to 100% CPU, as the attached image shows.

I think the problem is related to the progress bars. Each access point has a "progress bar" displaying the signal strength. These bars are animated in the Human (Murrine-based) theme, and I suppose, that the animation of each bar can cause the abnormal CPU activity.

I think the progress bars should not (and need not) contain animation, because they does not "express" any kind of "progress" (as in file copying).

My computer: Eee PC 901, Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270@1.60GHz, Intel(R) 945GME, 1 Gb RAM

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
IfupdownConfig:
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
Package: network-manager 0.7.1~rc4.1.cf199a964-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=hu_HU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: network-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[Gergely Janossy (marcabru)]

I would like to add, that if there is >20 wlan access point in the reach and you have a small screen (netbook), you just cannot browse because of the extra CPU activity. Scrolling just about 10 pixels up takes 2-3 seconds, so this bug renders almost useless the whole access point list.

[Gergely Janossy (marcabru)]

No one can reproduce this? Did I miss some detail? I think it would be easy to turn off the animation (other apps use non-animated murrine-gtk progress bars too), so the fix should be easy...

[puccha (yuri-schaeffer)]

Well, I'm also affected, I just didn't wan't to give a 'me too' reaction. Almost the same netbook with a 900 MHz celeron processor (eeepc 900).

With too much networks in the area it is almost impossible to browse the networks. I don't think disabling animated bars is a good solution, my microwave oven has enough computing power to animate multiple bars at once. _My_guess_ is that the coding for the bars is just insanely bad. Maybe it's a good idea to report this bug to the Gnome developers? I'm not sure about the best way to do this and who to inform.

[Gergely Janossy (marcabru)]

You are right. The source of the error is maybe somewhere in the Murrine gtk engine.

if I install the widget factory to test the theme and start it, I see that one of my CPUs is busy because of X.

$ sudo apt-get install thewidgetfactory htop
$ twf & htop

[binary.koala (binary-koala)]

i can confirm this too. using 'dust-sand' for my gtk controls.
the process of X takes too much whenever there is any gtk animation involved.
for some reason i suspect xorg-intel drivers.

my system - Lenovo x200/Intel P8400@2.2/IntelX4500 video, running latest Jaunty

[binary.koala (binary-koala)]

this might help
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReinhardTartler/X/RevertingIntelDriverTo2.4

[Matthew Woerly (nattgew)]

Karmic just changed the look of Network Manager... no more "progress bars."
http://d0od.blogspot.com/2009/09/karmic-network-manager-updated-new-look.html

[Maarten Bezemer (veger)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running apport-collect 372456 and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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