Nautilus uses 100% cpu after downloading torrent

[Azraele]

Binary package hint: nautilus

After some hours i'm downloading with ktorrent, or azureus, or Trasmission (i've tried almost all of them) nautilus suddenly goes 100% and stays there 'till i reboot or shut down the process. I'm using ubuntu 9.10 64 bit version but i experienced this problem since ubuntu 8.04, i tried even 32 bit versions but the problem pops up nonetheless. I' m not a computer genius so if you need more info just ask (it's better if you give me instructions because i'm not familiar with debugging)

[Azraele (azraele)]

I've just noticed that with no nautilus windows open it is using 876 Megs of memory wich is just too much, even vista uses less memory!!! and I am quite certain that the memory use will increase since when yesterday it started using 100% cpu ubunutu was using 2.0 Gigs of memory, which of course with only ktorrent open is too much.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Greetings,

I am happy to help! Could you please tell me how you concluded Nautilus is consuming 100% of the CPU and 876MB of RAM for some period of time? I need the specific steps you took to recreate this problem so I can reproduce this problem.

You may find it helpful to read "How to report bugs effectively" http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We'd be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem.

We have instructions on debugging some types of problems at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures

At a minimum, we need:
1. the specific steps or actions you took that caused you to encounter the problem,
2. the behavior you expected, and
3. the behavior you actually encountered (in as much detail as possible).
Thanks!

[Azraele (azraele)]

First o f all the distro I am using is ubuntu 9.10, with the latest kernel and updates. I opended ktorrent, and left it opened overnight downloading as usual. I use nautilus as everybody does, moving though dirs moving files (usually large ones): but i am a bit chaotic that's why I open lots of nautilus windows, which it's what made me notice that the nautilus was slowing down. So I closed all the windows opened but from the system monitor applet i noticed the cpu was stuck at 100%. The following morning doing the same thing I noticed that when I opened a new nautilus window or broswed an internet page with many flash video the nautilus size increased drastically: the problem is when I closed firefox or the file browser the memory usage of the nautilus process ( of course i monitored this with system monitor too) did not decrease as expect but kept the same size: obviously with this behavior the process size increased every time I used something related to it reaching the unbeliavable size this morning of 1.7 gigs.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

I fully understand. Does your machine respond normally? If your CPU was truly pegged at 100% then your machine would be completely unusable. You would not be able to launch Firefox, Nautilis or much of anything. It is possible the applet is reporting inaccurate data or it is being mis-read. Could you post a screenshot of the utility where it shows your machine is consuming 100% of the CPU? Just press the PRINT SCREEN button your keyboard, save the screen print to disk then attach it to this bug report. Make sure there is no private data on your screen before taking the screen print.

Are you comfortable accessing the console? If so then I can walk you through confirming your system is using 100% of the cpu.

The RAM consumption is completely normal for both Windows and Linux. I am attaching a screenshot of a pretty standard Windows performance monitor. In this case, even with moderate use, a Windows Vista consumes about 1.2GB of RAM and Windows 7 consumes even more. The reason why your system appears to use 876MB (which is a pretty small number) is because most of that is used by your swap partition.

There are 2 reasons why data is swapped to disk. First, when the system requires more memory than is physically available, the kernel swaps out less used pages and gives memory to the current application (process) that needs the memory immediately. This is unlikely in your case because you have enough RAM available. Second, a significant number of the pages used by an application during its startup phase may only be used for initialization and then never used again. The system can swap out those pages and free the memory for other applications or even for the disk cache. If your system is loaded long enough then eventually that data will be garbage collected freeing up space for other data. If you have enough RAM then that data may be stored in your swap partition for days, weeks, months or years assuming your machine is never rebooted.

I hope this helps.

[Azraele (azraele)]

Well the problem is a have 4 gigs of memory, and as you can see in my screenshot my system has never used since i built it any swap memory. The second point is that nautilus is using 2.2 gigs of memory: isn't that unusual that with only one nautilus window opened it is using so much memory? and then again: how can it use 100% cpu? you can see it in the screenshot too! of course my processor doesn't get stuck because it has 4 cores, which are pretty difficult to get stuck altogheter since their used to multitask different process simultaneously and never use 4 cores for one process, but if it were the case my cpu would be stuck with this stats: seems a problem to me but maybe i'm wrong..

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

I am very sorry for doubting you. You are correct and your concerns are valid. Do you have any other thoughts on how to reproduce the problem? Is Nautilus launching on its own and spiking to 100% while downloading? after the downloads are complete? Are you opening Nautilus to browse the folders where the torrents are being stored when the problem occurs?

We will need to figure out the steps necessary to recreate the problem before we can confirm the bug. Once I can recreate the problem then it will become very easy to reproduce and get it fixed. Any help you can provide to get us there would be appreciated.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

Could you also obtain an strace of Nautilus after it has spiked to 100%?

1 - Make sure strace is installed.

      apt-get install strace

2 - Find the process ID of <program>:

      pidof nautilus

3 - Start strace with the process ID:

      strace -Ff -tt -p <PID> 2>&1 | tee strace-<program>.log

4 - Perform any actions necessary to reproduce the bug.
5 - You may have to hit Control-C to get strace to detach from a running program.
6 - Attach the complete output from strace, contained in strace-<program>.log, in your bug report.

[Azraele (azraele)]

Well I'll do my best to find a procedure but the strange thing is that i don't have really to do anything to make the problem happen, in fact yesterday I killed nautilus (because of the unbelievable size) then I started it again (since to have a nautilus process I don't really need to open a file browsing window, I have one since the system boot, it's the desktop one i think, problem is when I boot it is 24 megs big and then it starts growing like a pie) and left it opened overnight with ktorrent downloading. Since I am the only user of the pc, I can solidly state that nobody touched it all the night: without any action it grows by himself. Nonetheless I will left it opened with strace, problem is when i give the command :

strace -Ff -tt -p <14226> 2>&1 | tee strace-<program>.log

where 14226 is the process id it gives me this output:

bash: syntax error near unexpected token `14226'

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

I am assuming you are actually typing:

strace -Ff -tt -p 14226 2>&1 | tee strace-nautilus.log

and not:

strace -Ff -tt -p <14226> 2>&1 | tee strace-<program>.log

[Azraele (azraele)]

:D :D sorry

I'll leave it open with strace and post the results

[Azraele (azraele)]

How do I stop strace? the log has reached 900 MB I think it's enough. Even because the size of nautilus is approx 1300 MB so you should be able to see what is the problem in the log..

[Azraele (azraele)]

Here the strace file my man. Show the world what it means to be ubuntu programmer!

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

Please keep in mind I am only a volunteer triager with a love for Ubuntu and free software which is half a star-system away from a good developer.

I am going to mark the bug confirmed and hopefully the strace will help a developer isolate the cause and find a solution. If not then please do not be upset if the status is returned to "incomplete" with a request for additional information.

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Azraele (azraele)]

Well I can say the concern is appreciated nonetheless. Let's hope then that the A-class developer find a solution to this problem, It's quite serious and a good os should not have to face something like that I fear.

After all I think that this one, and the usb transfer speed are the two major problems of this nice free software, have the two of 'em nailed would remarkably improve the quality of the ubuntu experience.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Please try to obtain a backtrace of that following the instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and upload the backtrace (as an attachment) to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

[Azraele (azraele)]

When I use gdb following this procedure:

Start gdb:
gdb 2>&1 | tee gdb-<program>.txt
(gdb) handle SIG33 pass nostop noprint
(gdb) set pagination 0
(gdb) attach <PID>
(If the program is running as root, use sudo gdb instead of just gdb above.)
Continue the <program>:
(gdb) continue
The program will continue running. Perform any actions necessary to reproduce the crash. If the program hangs but doesn't crash you can press ctrl+c in gdb while the program is frozen and then continue with the next step.

When I give the command continue, in the system monitor nautilus is "stopped" (that's what's written in the cpu % value),
and if I go back to gdb pressing cntrl+c to start the debug it gives me:
this sign:
^C
and does not responds to any of my commands...

Help would be appreciated

[Azraele (azraele)]

and when I give the debug symbol archive signing key:

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key 428D7C01 5E0577F2
gpg --check-sigs 428D7C01 # signed by key of Martin Pitt
gpg -o - --export 428D7C01 | sudo apt-key add -

It gives me as output:

2 signatures not checked due to missing keys

[Azraele (azraele)]

I made it work using the sudo prefix, but it still gives me this error:

This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
Reading symbols from /usr/bin/nautilus...(no debugging symbols found)...done.

probably because of the missing signatures that I posted before. I' ll post the debug files that It as given me.
If you'll provide me with good debug symbol archive signing keys I'll provide you more valuable infos.

[Azraele (azraele)]

Is anybody out there???

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

Lets go through this step-by-step because I am not confident I fully understand what you have done so far.

First.. Have you issued these commands from the command line:

1)
echo "deb http://ddebs.ubuntu.com $(lsb_release -cs) main restricted universe multiverse" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ddebs.list
2)
echo "deb http://ddebs.ubuntu.com $(lsb_release -cs)-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ddebs.ubuntu.com $(lsb_release -cs)-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ddebs.ubuntu.com $(lsb_release -cs)-proposed main restricted universe multiverse" |
sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ddebs.list
3)
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 428D7C01 5E0577F2
4)
gpg -o - --export 428D7C01 | sudo apt-key add -
5)
sudo apt-get update
6)
sudo apt-get install nautilus-dbg

------------------------

If you entered command #1 and #2 correctly then entering this command:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ddebs.list

Should provide these results:

deb http://ddebs.ubuntu.com karmic main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ddebs.ubuntu.com karmic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ddebs.ubuntu.com karmic-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ddebs.ubuntu.com karmic-proposed main restricted universe multiverse

------------------------

If you entered command #3 correctly then you should see a message saying you imported 2 keys successfully. If you entered command #4 correctly then it should simply respond with "OK". Command #5 and #6 should complete without errors.

------------------------

Let me know if you make it this far.

[Azraele (azraele)]

The thing I don't understand it's why they asked me to do this. Nautilus does not crash: it devours all the system resources, but it works on. The fact that it doesn't crash while using 2.2 gigs of memory does not make it less of a problem. I don't really know if the debug will be of any help. However I'll let it overload as usual then run gdb and post the output.

[Azraele (azraele)]

Here's the result of the backtrace I ran while nautilus was overloaded.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

The backtrace indicates you failed to install debugging symbols as per the documentation provided.

"Reading symbols from /usr/bin/nautilus...Reading symbols from /usr/lib/debug/usr/bin/nautilus...done.
(no debugging symbols found)...done."

If you fail to carefully follow the instructions shown in the documentation then any resulting backtrace will fail to provide the necessary information needed to track down this bug. Please try to obtain a backtrace following the instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and upload the backtrace (as an attachment) to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

If you are unsure about any specific step then proceed as far as possible while capturing your terminal buffer to a text file. This will help us isolate any failures in the documentation that may be preventing you from capturing an useful backtrace.

[Azraele (azraele)]

Man I'm gettin' a little nervous here. I followed your instructions move by move. As a matter of fact I copied every single command and inserted it in the terminal in the ordinated fashion you gave me. I even checked again if nautilus-dbg was installed, and it is.
But still I get that the debug symbols are missing.

[Azraele (azraele)]

Here's the moves I made, you let me know if I made something wrong.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

Good.. I reviewed your moves.txt and here is where the problem begins:

alexandros@alexandros-desktop:~$ apt-cache policy yelp

This documentation:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash

States:

"Remember that 'yelp' [which is the package name of "Help and Support" located under the 'System' menu] is just an example and not a part of the command. It is just used to demonstrate the procedure. You will have to replace 'yelp' with the name of the package you want to debug. "

In your case the command "apt-cache policy yelp" should have been "apt-cache policy nautilus" (since Nautilus is the thread consuming an exceptional amount of CPU). You should also replace "yelp" with "nautilus" in the subsequent commands where necessary. The rest looks good. Just start at "apt-cache policy yelp", post your updated console log and your new backtrace.

Glad you followed-up. Keep working on it. We'll get there..

[Azraele (azraele)]

I'm sorry man, in my country it was 3 a.m. when I tried to install it, I wasn't that much careful.
I see what I did wrong, I installed the correct debug symbols but it still says I don't have any! Watch by yourself.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Okay.. Clearly the documentation is a bit lacking so lets try creating on our own.

sudo gdb nautilus 2>&1 | tee ~/gdb-nautilus.txt

.. should produce "Reading symbols from /usr/bin/nautilus...(no debugging symbols found)...done." Now type "quit" then press RETURN or ENTER so we exit gdb.

Now try this:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nautilus-dbg
sudo apt-get install libgnome-desktop*
sudo killall nautilus
sudo gdb nautilus 2>&1 | tee ~/gdb-nautilus.txt

You should see gdb load and it finds the debug symbols:

"Reading symbols from /usr/lib/debug/usr/bin/nautilus...done.
(gdb) "

Now.. from the gdb prompt..

(gdb) exec-file /usr/bin/nautilus
(gdb) symbol-file /usr/lib/debug/usr/bin/nautilus
Load new symbol table from "/usr/lib/debug/usr/bin/nautilus"? (y or n) y
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/debug/usr/bin/nautilus...done.
(gdb) handle SIG33 pass nostop noprint
Signal Stop Print Pass to program Description
SIG33 No No Yes Real-time event 33
(gdb) set pagination 0
(gdb) run

Nautilus should load. Leave it open for a bit and confirm it is still growing in size. At some point close the window. Then hold down the CTRL button and press C to terminate gdb debugging because it will probably fail to terminate on its own. (Make sure you are inside the gdb terminal window when you press CTRL-C).

You should see something like..

Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
0x00b54422 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
(gdb)

Now..

(gdb) backtrace full
(gdb) info registers
(gdb) x/16i $pc
(gdb) thread apply all backtrace
(gdb) quit
A debugging session is active.

 Inferior 1 [process 8089] will be killed.

Quit anyway? (y or n) y

Once this is done you should attach the resulting gdb-nautilus.txt. Hopefully that will be everything we need.

Please attach an updated moves.txt if you run into problems.

[Azraele (azraele)]

Ok, I think I made it: perhaps I left it open for too much time, but the output is recursive so I think it's probably useful, you let me know.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

Please keep in mind I am only a volunteer triager.

I am going to mark the bug confirmed and hopefully the backtrace will help a developer isolate the cause and find a solution. If not then please do not be upset if the status is returned to "incomplete" with a request for additional information.

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the current stacktrace is useless since it has no symbols, libglib2.0-0-dbg and libgtk2.0-0-dbg should be installed, would also be useful if somebody having the issue send the bug upstream since it seems to happen to very few users and could be configuration specific

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

Would you feel comfortable installing libglib2.0-0-dbg and libgtk2.0-0-dbg and repeating the debug process? If so then I will be happy to push it upstream for you.

[Azraele (azraele)]

Here we go.

If you push it upstream I'll be tankful! Send us the link

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the stracktrace there seems to indicate nautilus is in its idle loop and it should be using any cpu, are you sure the cpu use is due to nautilus?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you get the issue if your turn thumbnailing off in the nautilus options?

[Azraele (azraele)]

I already post a screenshot showing both system monitor and top, you can see there that clearly it's nautilus the problem.
I don't think it is a thumbnails issue-related because most of the time it goes 2.2 gigs big and 100% cpu there are no nautilus browser windows opened, it's only the desktop process

[Azraele (azraele)]

I already posted a screenshot showing both system monitor and top, you can see there that clearly it's nautilus the problem.
I don't think it is a thumbnails issue-related because most of the time it goes 2.2 gigs big and 100% cpu there are no nautilus browser windows opened, it's only the desktop process

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments at:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=604643

[Azraele (azraele)]

I don't wanna be rude but it seems that nobody gives a shxt!! It's obvious that free software isn't well developed as the other ones but at least one should have good support to fix the unbelievable number of bugs that it has attached..
Plus it seems to be a pretty serious bug since with the nautilus not working, it's pretty hard to use the OS..

I'm quite disappointed.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Azraele:

I am sorry you feel this way. Please keep in mind that if we could reproduce this problem on any other machine then it would be much easier to resolve and fix. I have 5 test machines here and none of them, including my primary machine has ever seen the memory or CPU utilization you describe. My girlfriend has 2 laptops and both run Kubuntu. Her sister uses Ubuntu. We all use various bitorrent clients and none of them have even temporarily demonstrated this problem. I also feel a bit obligated to point out that out of 13,000,000 people (and growing) using any of the *buntu distros; less than 1/2 of 1% have filed a bug report since Ubuntu's inception.

I personally have contributed at least a couple of hours of my life (completely unpaid) getting your bug report together. It has been forwarded upstream so the people who actually write this particular software can get a chance to resolve the problem. You indicated this has been a problem for about 20 months. I think it is appropriate to assume it will take more than 5 days to respond to your bug report.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thanks for sending upstream Dave. We still keep upstreamed tasks open in Launchpad though, so I'm reopening the Ubuntu bug

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

I've not had a chance to read every comment in this bug in detail yet, but it seems that the backtraces provided were from running Nautilus with sudo. There should be no need to do this, and that might be why the backtrace doesn't show anything useful (if it is your users instance of Nautilus which has broken, then running a second instance of nautilus under GDB as a different user won't be much use)

Nautilus will exit if you run a new instance when there is already one running in your session, so you can't just run "gdb nautilus". You need to attach GDB to the instance of nautilus which is already running in your session. The procedure for doing this is documented in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Backtrace#Already%20running%20programs

Please try and do this (only when Nautilus is consuming a lot of CPU). It also helps sometimes to interrupt and obtain a backtrace several times, to make sure that it is interrupted in roughly the same code path each time.

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Chris:

Thank you for all your help!

Azraele:

Do you need any assistance following the instructions Chris provided?

[Azraele (azraele)]

I'm on it, I let you know if help is needed.
I it sounded offensive, I want you to know that it wasn't the goal of my observation. However to find bugs in Ubuntu depends on the kind of usage you do of the os, i'll make you an example:
I have a phenom II 965, I'm overclocking it that's why I need an accurate temperatures monitoring. In other OS it's not a big deal, but it took me 2 hours to find a workaround because there are no k10 sensor scripts in ubuntu yet, and I had to compile a makefile (which, goes by itself it's absurd because this kind of architechtures exists from years nowadays).
The point is, an average pc user doesn't have the farthest idea on how to compile a makefile scripts and or which are the rules of writing this kind of files. An averege pc user doesn't even need the refined technology experience that leads most of the time into bugs or lack of software support (sadly not my case since using nautilus is a pretty basic task, as using an usbkey). The large part of ubuntu's user probably aren't even aware of experiencing bugs when they step into one, (an example of that could be the usb transfer speeds, which are completely ridiculous, most of all if the transfer to be made is between a win filesystem and a linux one) and start complaining about it on the ubuntu forum hoping for someone to accidentally crash into a solution (that's the case of the usb transfer speed, I could send you links which prove the presence of the issue since 7.04).
Those factors, combined with the fact that the philosophy of free software needs the user not only to be a consumer but to have an active role in the developing of the software (philosophy that all of us can see not everybody is fully embracing) absence of a pro team working on it for a livin' makes ubuntu very slow on dealing with some kind of problems, and saying that it's only a half of 1% of the people filing reports does not surprise me, not should you at this point, and as I've already pointed out the cause is not always the fact that ubuntu is a "rock solid system".

[Azraele (azraele)]

About our conversation, I filed the reports this morning.

However, I tried attaching the debug as mr. Coulson told me, I combined the standard instructions with the ones you gave me Dave, loading the libraries as it was pointed out in your post:

(gdb) symbol-file /usr/lib/debug/usr/bin/nautilus
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/debug/usr/bin/nautilus...done.

but sadly the output is a list of tons of missing debug libraries. I attached the output, maybe you can help me finding the packages which provide the libraries I'm missing.

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thanks, but there is no backtrace there, because it seems you didn't run "bt full" after interrupting Nautilus. Could you please try again?

Thanks

[Azraele (azraele)]

There are missing debug libraries that's why I stopped the process without following the instruction, I need somebody to tell me which packages to download to have the libraries I need, or I'm afraid the backtrace won't be useful!

[Azraele (azraele)]

Here it is, the one with the backtrace you previously asked me

[Azraele (azraele)]

That's the one of the running nautilus, should be useful this time

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks for the trace. I linked it at the upstream bug.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you still get the issue in newer versions?

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Bug report did not expire due to presence of an upstream bug
Upstream report was closed "RESOLVED OBSOLETE" on 2021-06-18
Last comment re bug was over 15 years ago and there was no reply to comment #53
Closing as bug report is no longer valid for currently supported releases of Ubuntu