gnome-panel hangs with almost 100% CPU usage

[gesus]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

In irregular intervals gnome-panel takes almost 100% of cpu usage and almost freezes, i.e. there is a lot of hard-disk i/o, the cpu is heavilly buisy and if you click on an applet on the panel you get a response after some time (exceptionally the calendar app, there's no response). If you kill the process, it will be replaced by a new gnome-panel process, which has the same behaviour. I restarted gdm and after logging in there was the same behaviour. _Sometimes_ a reboot is helpfull.

I wil attach an archive with an strace and a backtrace of gnome-panel.

I use ubuntu 9.10 64bit amd. Moreover I use the proprietary fglrx drivers.

$ apt-cache policy gnome-panel
gnome-panel:
  Installiert: 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu6
  Kandidat: 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu6
  Versions-Tabelle:
 *** 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu6 0
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Nov 3 07:18:03 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: gnome-panel 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu6
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-panel
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. 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)

[gesus (launchpad-c-saris)]

Okay, thanks. I sent the bug report to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600538 Hope, it will be solved soon.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for sending the bug to GNOME, don't count on a quick fix since the code is not being actively worked, didn't change recently and there is not a lot of users getting the issue there

[gesus (launchpad-c-saris)]

Oh, that's not nice. It's an annoying bug and I really can't work with that. But i found out something, maybe you have an idea?

I tried to delete the upper default panel (the one with the program menu, the
calender app and so on). After the deletion cpu was on idle. Next I tried to
add a new panel. To this I added the program menu app and gnome-panel once again
took almost 100% cpu-usage.

So it maybe has something to do with an error in the menu app?

I also tried to empty the directory /etc/xdg/menus but with no success.

[gesus (launchpad-c-saris)]

After I created a new panel as described above, I recognised that nautilus took loads of cpu time. Moreover I recognised a process ntfs-3g although no ntfs-volume was mounted. I looked into the /etc/fstab and there was an entry which should mount a ntfs partition.

After removing this entry my system seems to run stable.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you get the same issue with an another user? could be a .local change

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you give details on the fstab entry creating the issue?

[gesus (launchpad-c-saris)]

Yes I get the same issue if I login with another user. The entry in fstab which created that trouble was:

/dev/sdb1 /media/Volume ntfs-3g defaults,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 0 0

To more precise, of course the problem did not disappear after commenting it out, but after rebooting.

What does this mean, a '.local' change? I tried to mount this device (/dev/sdb1) without the locale-options. No problems.

[gesus (launchpad-c-saris)]

I am not sure, but I think it's wrong to mark this as a duplicate of Bug 187540 (Gnome-panel freeze when 8 windows are open when the panel is vertical+ /"non-expanded horizontal). This problem is different and has nothing to do with vertical panels, etc.

[Michel Graciano (michel-graciano)]

Well, I had an similar problem but this disappear if I log in with UTF-8 encoding. When I log in with ISO 8859-1 which is my default encoding since 8.04 without any problem, the gnome just stop to work. I need to kill nautilus and gnome-panel process (in this order) and the panel is rendered. But if I try to open nautilus by hand, the problem happens again. Looks like when nautilus try to map all my partitions this just hang all gnome-panel process. Any idea how to solve this or workaround?

[JP Meijers (jpm)]

I also have this issue at the moment. Ubuntu 9.10, 64bit. Gnome-panel has a cpu usage of between 80 and 100% and is unusable.

I plugged one of my ntfs hdd's out yesterday. It does have a fstab entry. Will replug it now and check what happens.

AND IT WORKED!

Everything is fine now. Thus, this is not a duplicate bug. This is a bug samewhere between gnome-panel <-> fstab <-> fuse <-> ntfs-3g.

My ntfs-3g version is: 2009.11.14 integrated FUSE 27

My fstab line for the ntfs hdd looks as follows: /dev/sdb1 /media/250B ntfs user 0 0

[jmst (jmst)]

I have a dual boot PC, with Windows XP in a NTFS partition. If I do not shutdown Windows properly, for instance doing hibernate instead of shutdown, when I start Ubuntu Karmic the disk is very busy, and gnome-panel uses a lot of CPU. I have to reboot Windows, shutdown properly, and reboot Ubuntu. Then the problem is solved.