Starting HP Toolbox brings system to a grinding halt

[Eric Appleman]

If I try to start the app, my computer slowly becomes unresponsive. The app never loads and I have to restart.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: hplip-gui 3.11.5-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-5.6-genusername 3.0.0-rc7
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-5-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Jul 19 19:31:20 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Alpha i386 (20110717)
Lpstat: device for Photosmart-C3100-series: hp:/usb/Photosmart_C3100_series?serial=MY65IB518X04KV
MachineType: Dell Inc. MXC061
PackageArchitecture: all
Papersize: letter
PpdFiles: Photosmart-C3100-series: HP Photosmart c3100 Series, hpcups 3.11.5
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-5-genusername root=UUID=cd7bf56d-da66-44ae-b040-6ae048274410 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: hplip
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 07/10/2007
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A11
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA11:bd07/10/2007:svnDellInc.:pnMXC061:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
dmi.product.name: MXC061
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

In a terminal window run the command

hp-toolbox -g | tee hp-toolbox.log

When the computer has gotten unresponsive, kill hp-toolbox or restart the computer. Attach hp-toolbox.log to this bug report.

The command shows the logging also in the terminal window. Does the logging suggest that the hp-toolbox falls into an endless loop or does it stop logging (hp-toolbox waiting for something) when the computer gets unresponsive?

Was your printer turned on when you started hp-toolbox?

I cannot reproduce the problem. I have very many HP printers and not all are connected and turned on, but for me the hp-toolbox does not show the problem.

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

I couldn't generate a log or even see if it tried.

[Sarbeswar Meher (sarbeswar-meher)]

HPLIP doesn't support Ubuntu 11.10 yet as it is not released. Please use Ubuntu 11.04 and test whether you're getting the same issue.

Thanks,
Sarbeswar Meher

[Dave Stroud (bigdavesr)]

I have to do a hard shutdown on my system. See bug # 716555

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Dave, can you follow the instructions in my comment #2?

Eric, Dave, for doing the test which I describe the system must be in a responsive state. If it got unresponsive, shut down and boot it, right after boot, open a terminal window and run the command

hp-toolbox -g | tee hp-toolbox.log

When the system is not responsive any more, shut down and boot again. After the boot, attach the file hp-toolbox.log to this bug report.

[pck (pck1980)]

I can confirm this issue with 11.10

When starting the HPlip-toolbox, an empty window appears (only the window border) and the system becomes unresponsive. I haven't tried to produce a log file so far, but I found out that the X-server instance seems to require huge amounts of memory. The system RAM runs full and the system starts swapping.
The only way to get the system back to normal operation seems to be a reboot - or to kill the X-server.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

It is possible that this is a problem of X or even the video card driver. On my boxes (all with Intel graphics) the problem does not occur.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Eric, can you try

sudo hp-toolbox

Does this work?

[pck (pck1980)]

Forgot to mention that my system currently uses the proprietary AMD fglrx driver. With this driver uninstalled, I had problems with Unity and Unity 2D to start up correctly, so I couldn't test hplip with another driver so far.

[Ed (edwin-noordeloos)]

I have the same problem on three different installs on 2 different laptops. Only one install (upgraded from 11.04 does not have the problem.
Sudo hp-toolbox returns:

***********
HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.11.7)
HP Device Manager ver. 15.0

Copyright (c) 2001-9 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

error: dBus initialization error. Exiting.
edwin@edwin-Satellite-L300:~$
**********
hp-toolbox (without sudo) logs me off.

[Ed (edwin-noordeloos)]

Managed to interrupt hp-toolbox (without sudo). Result:

*********************
HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.11.7)
HP Device Manager ver. 15.0

Copyright (c) 2001-9 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

(python:1864): Gtk-WARNING **: Kan themamodule niet vinden in modulepad: ?pixmap?,

(python:1864): Gtk-WARNING **: Kan themamodule niet vinden in modulepad: ?pixmap?,

(python:1864): Gtk-WARNING **: Kan themamodule niet vinden in modulepad: ?pixmap?,

(python:1864): Gtk-WARNING **: Kan themamodule niet vinden in modulepad: ?pixmap?,

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(python:1864): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_s...

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Can there be any relationship/dependency between this bug and bug 805303?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

After today's updates I am also suffering this bug, so I did the steps of comment #2. The overloading of the system happens VERY quickly. A "top" in a terminal window on a remote machine (SSHed in to my laptop) shows that Xorg is quickly using up all memory and taking between 60% and 100% CPU (see below). This happens within 2 or 3 seconds, "top" does only one refresh and then I can only do a hard reset.

hp-toolbox.log is empty. The system is torn down before "tee" is able to write any data.

This happens with all GUI tools of HPLIP. If I send a job into the fax queue of an HP multi-function device, my system crashes the same way, as the system probably tries to pop-up hp-sendfax.

My graphics card:

----------
till@till:~$ lspci
[...]
000:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
[...]
----------

Probably this is a problem of Xorg. For me Xorg also pulls 100% CPU when lightdm is started.

----------
top - 22:59:21 up 14 min, 2 users, load average: 4.80, 1.59, 0.98
Tasks: 196 total, 4 running, 191 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.2%us, 4.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 94.6%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 3952852k total, 3864404k used, 88448k free, 1452k buffers
Swap: 8388604k total, 597784k used, 7790820k free, 123340k cached
Write failed: Broken pipe
till@till-desktop:~$ I VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
  409 root 20 0 0 0 0 D 4 0.0 0:07.39 kworker/0:3
   22 root 20 0 0 0 0 D 4 0.0 0:10.70 kworker/1:1
 3736 root 20 0 4285m 2.5g 800 D 1 65.5 1:04.66 Xorg
   24 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 1 0.0 0:01.05 kswapd0
   44 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 0 0.0 0:00.49 kworker/0:2
  306 root 20 0 0 0 0 R 0 0.0 0:12.64 kworker/1:2
    1 root 20 0 24316 376 372 S 0 0.0 0:00.88 init
    2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
    3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.10 ksoftirqd/0
    4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:10.90 kworker/0:0
    6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
    7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
    9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.11 ksoftirqd/1
   11 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset
   12 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper

[Jim Patterson (jimp-launchpad-rs9z)]

This bug does seem to be a manifestation of [Bug 805303|https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/805303]. The fix from that bug works for me. I've installed qt4-config, and used qtconfig to change the style to Motif. Problem gone (though you have to be content with the Motif style)! I can run hp-toolbox and hp-setup now.

The Python message, "Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_style_get: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed", seems to be the clue that it's this qt4 issue. I've seen it with Picard as well, and the other bug report was originally a vlc report.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Following comment #5 and #13 of bug 805303 I get the HPLIP GUI tools working again. So this bug seems to be the same as bug 805303.

[Ed (edwin-noordeloos)]

QT4-QTConfig works for me as well.
Thanks