imwheel causes heavy load, depending on setting of -f switch

[Michael Nagel]

Binary package hint: imwheel

since recently imwheel causes really heavy system load occassionally. most of the time everything works all right, but for no obvious reason the sysem becomes slower and slower... it takes for about a minute to open a terminal then and top shows that imwheel is the misbehaving program... killing imwheel makes the system usable again (special mouse buttons wont work of course)

only thing i changed about my system configuration lately is that i use xgl now (dont know if this is anyhow related with the problem).

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

this bug seems to be xgl specific as i was not able to reproduce it using xorg-xserver ever since. happens quite often using xgl, though.

[sniffy (konwal1)]

i have the same problem on dapper without using xgl. when i push my additional mousebutton on my M$ explorer 3.0, the CPU-usage turns to 100%. It seems to me that this only happens, if another process uses the CPU harder

[Celebere (celebere-gmail)]

Confirmed in hardy, using xorg. Might be related to the use of a slow (failing) external hard drive.

[TheDOC (ubuntu-pluecken)]

Happens here as well with intrepid after the screensaver is stopped.

[ramas (slocascio)]

I have solved by following the instructions at Step #3 of this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=787790

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

do you mean the part about enabling/disabling the -f parameter switch?

people using jaunty should try btnx and see if it does what they expect
http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/btnx

[ramas (slocascio)]

Yes Michael, that part indicates that imwheel can use too much resources, and if so, use the -f parameter. Now I am using it without problems.

I know btnx, but for my media box system I'm using the more stark xbindkeys tool.

[Victor Trac (victor-trac)]

I've been using the -f switch successfully, but it seems that the problem is back with 9.04. I notice that my buttons aren't working correctly, and then looking at process list, I see Xorg taking up ~75% cpu with imwheel coming right behind at 25% or so.

[Victor Trac (victor-trac)]

I've switched to btnx and it seems to work much better. It's much easier to use and hasn't caused any problems so far.

[Jasa Bartelj (jbartelj)]

I've been experiencing this issue as well. It occurs on my multi-user system.

I am able to reproduce this:
1. Log in as user A
2. Via the user applet log in concurrently as user B
3. Log out as user B
4. Enter password of user A
5. Scroll mouse wheel and see the CPU utilisation rise.

A quick workaround is Alt+F2 and running "imwheel -k". I admit - a launcher for a script would be even quicker.

I don't have time for debugging this but i don't see it as relevant as the development of imwheel has stopped 5 years ago. But at least I've found this bug report with a nice new alternative - btnx. Thanks!