[Karmic] mount.ntfs-3g high CPU utilization and causes sytem sluggishness and unresponsive cursor.

[pdaemon]

Description: Ubuntu karmic (development branch)
Release: 9.10

I used wubi to install Jaunty on my NTFS partition, this was working fine. I decided to do a update-manager -d to upgrade to Karmic Koala.

I have the following symptoms which make the system hard to use:

* boot takes a very long time...especially the part between the ubuntu progress bar screen and when the login screen pops up (this also takes a long time to populate)

Jul 5 14:45:10 ubuntu kernel: [ 0.545196] rtc_cmos 00:03: setting system clock to 2009-07-05 14:44:48 UTC (1246805088)
Jul 5 14:45:10 ubuntu kernel: [ 0.545199] BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 0 devices found
Jul 5 14:45:10 ubuntu kernel: [ 0.545201] EDD information not available.
Jul 5 14:45:10 ubuntu kernel: [ 0.840021] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Jul 5 14:45:10 ubuntu kernel: [ 0.840056] ata3: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

* top show ntfs3g using alot of CPU time, and high system load.

top - 05:05:01 up 23 min, 2 users, load average: 4.13, 4.04, 3.11
Tasks: 183 total, 6 running, 177 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 9.7%us, 1.2%sy, 7.2%ni, 16.2%id, 16.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 49.7%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 6127824k total, 6080124k used, 47700k free, 3583568k buffers
Swap: 262136k total, 0k used, 262136k free, 1736100k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 1941 root 20 0 16932 1804 708 R 37 0.0 5:02.49 mount.ntfs-3g
    4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 25 0.0 3:31.99 ksoftirqd/0
 4205 pdaemon 20 0 343m 33m 12m S 18 0.6 1:54.75 transmission
 4277 pdaemon 20 0 585m 125m 27m S 12 2.1 1:31.25 firefox
 3738 pdaemon 20 0 219m 12m 9428 R 6 0.2 0:26.68 multiload-apple
 3036 root 20 0 196m 48m 17m S 4 0.8 3:36.34 Xorg
    9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 R 3 0.0 1:33.48 events/0
 4434 pdaemon 30 10 21012 336 232 R 3 0.0 0:00.10 gconftool
 3978 pdaemon 20 0 309m 49m 17m S 3 0.8 1:56.59 compiz.real
  152 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 1 0.0 0:25.88 kblockd/0
 3692 pdaemon 20 0 353m 27m 15m S 1 0.5 0:03.52 gnome-panel
  304 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.03 kswapd0
 1162 root 20 0 16504 1272 596 S 0 0.0 0:56.49 mount.ntfs
 3412 mysql 20 0 172m 21m 5236 S 0 0.4 0:01.19 mysqld
 3698 pdaemon 20 0 259m 30m 13m S 0 0.5 0:07.10 python
 4013 pdaemon 20 0 173m 12m 8208 S 0 0.2 0:00.65 gtk-window-deco
    1 root 20 0 4104 1024 732 S 0 0.0 0:00.47 init

* cursor becomes unresponsive often...

Please tell me what other info you need me to get to you, so that we can work on tnis...

Thanks Alot

Regards
pdaemon

[pdaemon (philipp-burath)]

root@ubuntu:/var/log# uname -an
Linux ubuntu 2.6.31-1-generic #14-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jul 2 16:02:38 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[pdaemon (philipp-burath)]

ntfs-3g may be the right package, but I am unsure if the problem I'm having is specifically related to this package. Please help me find the right package if it is incorrect.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

I have just uploaded a version of ntfs-3g in to my PPA linked against its own internal FUSE. Could you please try installing this package and tell me if you still see the high CPU usage?

My PPA (and instructions for installing packages from it) can be found here: https://edge.launchpad.net/~chrisccoulson/+archive/ppa

*** Disclaimer: This package is completely untested by me, so use with caution ***

[pdaemon (philipp-burath)]

Hi Chris,

Thanks...I will test this tonight.

I will get back to you on this tommorow, and give you feedback!

Regards
Philipp

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Chris Coulson <email address hidden>
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:12:00 -0000
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 395892] Re: [Karmic] mount.ntfs-3g high CPU utilization
andcauses sytem sluggishness and unresponsive cursor.

I have just uploaded a version of ntfs-3g in to my PPA linked against
its own internal FUSE. Could you please try installing this package and
tell me if you still see the high CPU usage?

My PPA (and instructions for installing packages from it) can be found
here: https://edge.launchpad.net/~chrisccoulson/+archive/ppa

*** Disclaimer: This package is completely untested by me, so use with
caution ***

** Changed in: ntfs-3g (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Medium

** Changed in: ntfs-3g (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Incomplete

--
[Karmic] mount.ntfs-3g high CPU utilization and causes sytem sluggishness
and unresponsive cursor.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/395892
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of the bug.

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[pdaemon (philipp-burath)]

Hi Chris,

I have install ntfs-3g from your PPA to test.

It doesn't seem to have made a huge difference, but looks like it's not using as much CPU as before.

There now seem to be other processes that are causing the issues with the mouse freezing up, such as events, ksoftirqd maybe??

top - 19:50:45 up 9 min, 2 users, load average: 2.94, 3.05, 1.76
Tasks: 174 total, 2 running, 172 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 3.8%us, 2.1%sy, 0.3%ni, 27.2%id, 19.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 46.8%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 6127824k total, 2488076k used, 3639748k free, 877864k buffers
Swap: 262136k total, 0k used, 262136k free, 1070228k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
    4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 31 0.0 2:59.75 ksoftirqd/0
    9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 20 0.0 0:53.39 events/0
 4163 pdaemon 20 0 19120 1288 916 R 2 0.0 0:00.01 top
    1 root 20 0 4104 900 608 S 0 0.0 0:00.46 init
    2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
    3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:05.29 migration/0
    5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
    6 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
    7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.12 ksoftirqd/1
    8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
   10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 events/1
   11 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset
   12 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.95 khelper
   15 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
   18 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 async/mgr

Can I give you some debugging from ntfs-3g to make sure that this is fixed and then we can have a look at why the system is still so slow to boot and the cursor unresponsive and applications slow to respond?

Regards
Philipp

[pdaemon (philipp-burath)]

An fsck ran on the /ubuntu/disks/root.disk and after fixing alot of errors, the system came back up and seem to be running normally for a short time. Then I get more errors on the disk I/O device buffer errors in /var/log/messsages.

Maybe wubi didn't create the root.disk file correctly. I have check the disk for bad sectors and it's fine.

I will try to install Karmic again using wubi..

Regards
pdaemon

[pdaemon (philipp-burath)]

This seems to have been resolved in some patch release (not sure which packages) and Karmic is now working fine...

[Pavol Klačanský (pavolzetor-deactivatedaccount)]

at me, there mount.ntfs peaks to 100% of one core (I'm downloading torrent to ntfs partition)

pk@pk-laptop:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu lucid (development branch)
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid

CPU: Intel P8600

[Anton Kudris (kudris)]

updated ubuntu 9.04 to Karmic and now have problems with my second NTFS partition. I have second NTFS partition used only for file storage. And just like pavolzetor I'm downloading torrents on this partition. Almost 100% cpu load by mount.ntfs-3g

9.04 was just fine...

will try to compile latest ntfs3g from source files and see if it helps..

[kazabubu (geoserias)]

I used to have the same problem when I was downloading torrents on my ntfs partition.. the problem didn't appear again from the moment I stopped using NTFS Configuration tool to auto mount my partitions. I installed and started using MountManager and the cpu load levels are back to normal.

[jno (jnoster)]

When a USB-HDD was attached, I was able to move there about 10G from local HDD.
Then ntfs.mount process taken up to 100% of CPU and the thruoutput rate dropped dramatically from about 7Mb/s to almost zero. ls(1) on that disk became slooooow too.

HW: MSI Wind U100
OS: Ubuntu 9.10

Linux jno-wind 2.6.31-21-generic #59-Ubuntu SMP Wed Mar 24 07:28:56 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10
Codename: karmic

[Wim Goeman (wimgoeman)]

Looks like I have this issue too. Just tried to copy 6GB from my EXT4 partition to an NTFS data partition.
1 processor running at 100%. Laptop makes sound like an airplane. Speed seemed normal when the transfer started, but dropped after some time. Once I cancelled the transfer, everything went back to normal.

I am running Ubuntu Lucid, with all updates installed.

[jno (jnoster)]

I do confirm 10.04 has the same misfeature.

Well, some long files (up to 1024K in size) that were unable to copy under 9.10 now copied fine with some tamburine dance - I have to re-read directories before any new copy run to get something about 7..10Mbps on USB-drive. Longer files are still unmovable - the "speed" drops to almost zero and the gauage freeze on "30 minutes left".

This looks true for mere cp(1), ^C/^V in Nautilus, or even with rsync.

[Brian Harkness (maestro-bwh)]

I blamed banshee, since it was the only program that was really affected, but it was most likely due to the fact that it is always scanning the music collection placed there. System stopped freezing when I put that collection on fat32. It seems that is is ntfs-3g that was causing the issue.

I tried this. Will report back. Others can try this as well:

https://launchpad.net/~gezakovacs/+archive/ntfs-3g

[Brian Harkness (maestro-bwh)]

Sorry, I just noticed that was for karmic... :-(