Excessive CPU usage after 9.04 upgrade

[Lee S Parsons]

I recently upgraded my laptop from Kubuntu 8.10 to Kubuntu 9.04. Laptop has 2 gbs of ram, 1.6ghz P4m. Ran fine under 8.10; however it is unusable in 9.04 due to high CPU usage of XOrg.

When not running any applications beyond what is setup in KDE (as in, no web browser, no email, no text editor, no games ...) I find XOrg using 98% of my CPU or more. Even Konsole windows are nearly unusable.

I have found that no amount of time seems to resolve this problem, I can leave the system on overnight and XOrg will still be at 98% or more. I have also found that if I ssh in to the system instead, response is as expected; it seems to be driven by the local setup. If I log in locally first, then log in from another system while still logged in locally, I can see the excessive CPU usage of XOrg. However if I log out locally, leaving the system running, I can ssh in and things are normal (XOrg at less than 10% CPU).

I have tried reconfiguring xorg.conf via dpkg-reconfigure, that did not solve the problem. My current xorg.conf does not have a driver line in it; is there a different file that specifies the video driver?

-----
Additional work on the same system has shown that this is almost certainly related to the video driver. System has ATI Radeon Mobility graphics. When the commercial radeon drivers (as in xorg-driver-fglrx) are installed and chosen through xorg.conf, system will boot and allow login, but XOrg stays at a near constant 95% of CPU. When installed and not chosen (running VESA instead), system does not complete boot process; though is accessible remotely via ssh. When uninstalled and using VESA through xorg.conf, system does boot and behave normally, however VESA graphics default to 640x480.

Tried doing the same with the "ati" open source drivers, this did not solve the problem, rather the same problems observed with the xorg-driver-fglrx were seen.

[Psychotron (redm)]

I might have the same problem. For me it seems to be composite related. So Xorg uses full CPU when composite is enabled and running. So either disabling composite in xorg.conf or suspending it (Shift-Alt-F12 with KDE4 Kwin) gives normal CPU usage. Resuming it lets it go up again to 100%.

I did not have this problem with my nvidia card and proprietary drivers.

I can't check the fglrx driver as my card is not supported anymore.

I'm using Jaunty, and the card is an Radeon R420

[Lee S Parsons (lparsons42)]

Thank you for your insight.

However, i am not able to test this solution on my system, as I decided to
solve the problem by formatting my hard drive and installing a different
operating system. I was not able to wait for a solution to this problem, I
needed to accomplish a usable system sooner rather than later and kubuntu
9.04 was clearly not a usable system.

If this problem is resolved by the ubuntu group in the future I may consider
reinstalling this OS.

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Psychotron <email address hidden> wrote:

> I might have the same problem. For me it seems to be composite related.
> So Xorg uses full CPU when composite is enabled and running. So either
> disabling composite in xorg.conf or suspending it (Shift-Alt-F12 with
> KDE4 Kwin) gives normal CPU usage. Resuming it lets it go up again to
> 100%.
>
> I did not have this problem with my nvidia card and proprietary drivers.
>
> I can't check the fglrx driver as my card is not supported anymore.
>
> I'm using Jaunty, and the card is an Radeon R420
>
> --
> Excessive CPU usage after 9.04 upgrade
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/394300
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in Ubuntu: New
>
> Bug description:
> I recently upgraded my laptop from Kubuntu 8.10 to Kubuntu 9.04. Laptop
> has 2 gbs of ram, 1.6ghz P4m. Ran fine under 8.10; however it is unusable
> in 9.04 due to high CPU usage of XOrg.
>
> When not running any applications beyond what is setup in KDE (as in, no
> web browser, no email, no text editor, no games ...) I find XOrg using 98%
> of my CPU or more. Even Konsole windows are nearly unusable.
>
> I have found that no amount of time seems to resolve this problem, I can
> leave the system on overnight and XOrg will still be at 98% or more. I have
> also found that if I ssh in to the system instead, response is as expected;
> it seems to be driven by the local setup. If I log in locally first, then
> log in from another system while still logged in locally, I can see the
> excessive CPU usage of XOrg. However if I log out locally, leaving the
> system running, I can ssh in and things are normal (XOrg at less than 10%
> CPU).
>
> I have tried reconfiguring xorg.conf via dpkg-reconfigure, that did not
> solve the problem. My current xorg.conf does not have a driver line in it;
> is there a different file that specifies the video driver?
>
>
> -----
> Additional work on the same system has shown that this is almost certainly
> related to the video driver. System has ATI Radeon Mobility graphics. When
> the commercial radeon drivers (as in xorg-driver-fglrx) are installed and
> chosen through xorg.conf, system will boot and allow login, but XOrg stays
> at a near constant 95% of CPU. When installed and not chosen (running VESA
> instead), system does not complete boot process; though is accessible
> remotely via ssh. When uninstalled and using VESA through xorg.conf, system
> does boot and behave normally, however VESA graphics default to 640x480.
>
> Tried doing the same with the "ati" open source drivers, this did not solve
> the problem, rather the same problems observed with the xorg-driver...

[Bartosz Kosiorek (gang65)]

Please attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file.
If you can from after reproducing this issue.

Attach the output of `lspci -vvnn` command.

[Lee S Parsons (lparsons42)]

Thank you for your reply.

However I cannot run those commands on my laptop as I solved the problem by
deleting my Linux partition and installing FreeBSD. The newest version of
FreeBSD happily runs the newest KDE and XOrg on my laptop without incident.

I know there are others who had the same problem with Kubuntu on laptops
with ATI video cards, perhaps someone else will see this and be able to
provide that output for you.

thank you

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Bartosz <email address hidden> wrote:

> Please attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file.
> If you can from after reproducing this issue.
>
> Attach the output of `lspci -vvnn` command.
>
> --
> Excessive CPU usage after 9.04 upgrade
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/394300
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in Ubuntu: New
>
> Bug description:
> I recently upgraded my laptop from Kubuntu 8.10 to Kubuntu 9.04. Laptop
> has 2 gbs of ram, 1.6ghz P4m. Ran fine under 8.10; however it is unusable
> in 9.04 due to high CPU usage of XOrg.
>
> When not running any applications beyond what is setup in KDE (as in, no
> web browser, no email, no text editor, no games ...) I find XOrg using 98%
> of my CPU or more. Even Konsole windows are nearly unusable.
>
> I have found that no amount of time seems to resolve this problem, I can
> leave the system on overnight and XOrg will still be at 98% or more. I have
> also found that if I ssh in to the system instead, response is as expected;
> it seems to be driven by the local setup. If I log in locally first, then
> log in from another system while still logged in locally, I can see the
> excessive CPU usage of XOrg. However if I log out locally, leaving the
> system running, I can ssh in and things are normal (XOrg at less than 10%
> CPU).
>
> I have tried reconfiguring xorg.conf via dpkg-reconfigure, that did not
> solve the problem. My current xorg.conf does not have a driver line in it;
> is there a different file that specifies the video driver?
>
>
> -----
> Additional work on the same system has shown that this is almost certainly
> related to the video driver. System has ATI Radeon Mobility graphics. When
> the commercial radeon drivers (as in xorg-driver-fglrx) are installed and
> chosen through xorg.conf, system will boot and allow login, but XOrg stays
> at a near constant 95% of CPU. When installed and not chosen (running VESA
> instead), system does not complete boot process; though is accessible
> remotely via ssh. When uninstalled and using VESA through xorg.conf, system
> does boot and behave normally, however VESA graphics default to 640x480.
>
> Tried doing the same with the "ati" open source drivers, this did not solve
> the problem, rather the same problems observed with the xorg-driver-fglrx
> were seen.
>

[Psychotron (redm)]

Is that the ubuntu way of dealing with valid, grave bugs, marking them invalid?! I can send you the needed info, I just didn't get around bringing my system back into an unusable state (i.e. being a CPU hog). And even if I wouldn't, the bug isn't magically gone just because the initial poster deinstalled ubuntu!

[Lee S Parsons (lparsons42)]

I am willing to give "Bartosz" some slack on this one, at least up to a
point. I did, after all, report a bug for hardware that the programmers
likely consider "obscure" or "obsolete"; not many people have P4m laptop
systems with Radeon Mobility anymore. It does seem rather clear that the
problem is video driver related, so if there no Ubuntu programmers have
hardware with this video card in it, testing the bug can be difficult.

However, I do disagree with the label of "invalid". It is trivial to find
other accounts of the same problem online, so it certainly does exist. It
appears I was just the first one to report it here on launchpad. The tag of
"Won't fix" makes sense at this point as the configuration does not seem
important to ubuntu developers at this point in time, and "incomplete" I
cannot argue against either as I personally will not be able to provide the
files that were requested. However calling the bug "invalid" seems a bit
heavy-handed. Perhaps someone else with this problem will find this bug and
provide the requested files if they have not already deinstalled ubuntu for
an OS that works on this hardware.

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 5:29 AM, Psychotron <email address hidden> wrote:

> Is that the ubuntu way of dealing with valid, grave bugs, marking them
> invalid?! I can send you the needed info, I just didn't get around
> bringing my system back into an unusable state (i.e. being a CPU hog).
> And even if I wouldn't, the bug isn't magically gone just because the
> initial poster deinstalled ubuntu!
>
> --
> Excessive CPU usage after 9.04 upgrade
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/394300
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in Ubuntu: Invalid
>
> Bug description:
> I recently upgraded my laptop from Kubuntu 8.10 to Kubuntu 9.04. Laptop
> has 2 gbs of ram, 1.6ghz P4m. Ran fine under 8.10; however it is unusable
> in 9.04 due to high CPU usage of XOrg.
>
> When not running any applications beyond what is setup in KDE (as in, no
> web browser, no email, no text editor, no games ...) I find XOrg using 98%
> of my CPU or more. Even Konsole windows are nearly unusable.
>
> I have found that no amount of time seems to resolve this problem, I can
> leave the system on overnight and XOrg will still be at 98% or more. I have
> also found that if I ssh in to the system instead, response is as expected;
> it seems to be driven by the local setup. If I log in locally first, then
> log in from another system while still logged in locally, I can see the
> excessive CPU usage of XOrg. However if I log out locally, leaving the
> system running, I can ssh in and things are normal (XOrg at less than 10%
> CPU).
>
> I have tried reconfiguring xorg.conf via dpkg-reconfigure, that did not
> solve the problem. My current xorg.conf does not have a driver line in it;
> is there a different file that specifies the video driver?
>
>
> -----
> Additional work on the same system has shown that this is almost certainly
> related to the video driver. System has ATI Radeon Mobility graphics. When
> the commercial radeon drivers (as in xorg-driver-fglrx) are installed and
> chosen through xor...