Various akonadi processes use 100% CPU and 200% RAM at every KDE session startup

[Filip Miletic (Филип Милетић)]

On every KDE session startup, a bunch of akonadi-related processes are started. These start hogging the system CPU and RAM shortly after startup, and quickly tie up 100% CPU and 200% RAM (i.e. they use up almost 8G physical RAM and start chewing on swap as well!)

In order not to have my 2-core 8G RAM machine completely bogged down by these processes, I have to kill the processes manually, else my session becomes unusable and I have to reset the machine.

Ubuntu: up-to-date 11.10

[Filip Miletic (Филип Милетић) (filmil)]

Version: unspecified (using KDE 4.7.2)
OS: Linux

More details here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/akonadi/+bug/909022

On every KDE session startup, a bunch of akonadi-related processes are started. These start hogging the system CPU and RAM shortly after startup, and quickly tie up 100% CPU and 200% RAM (i.e. they use up almost 8G physical RAM and start chewing on swap as well!)

In order not to have my 2-core 8G RAM machine completely bogged down by these processes, I have to kill the processes manually, else my session becomes unusable and I have to reset the machine.

Ubuntu: up-to-date 11.10

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Log into a KDE session.

Actual Results:
akonadi ties up all system resources up.

Expected Results:
akonadi should not hog CPU nor RAM.

[Cgiboudeaux (cgiboudeaux)]

paste the output of 'akonadictl --version' please

[Filip Miletic (Филип Милетић) (filmil)]

$ akonadictl --version
Akonadi 1.6.2

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Fabien (fabfive)]

Same problem ! Multiple akonadi_agent_launcher starts until system hangs !

Ubuntu : up-to-date 11.10

[Don-redhat (don-redhat)]

I just updated to fedora kernel 3.1.9-1.fc16.x86_64, rebooted and found akonadiserver, mysql, akonadi_maildispatcher_agent using all of the cpu.
Even killing them didn't help - they restarted automatically.
I finally did
 mv /usr/bin/akonadiserver /usr/bin/akonadiserverxxx
and then killed it.
Now what?
$ akonadictl --version
Akonadi 1.6.2

Why do I want to run any of this stuff anyway?
How can I permanently disable it (even better uninstall) in fedora 16?

[Lonnie Blansett (lonnie)]

I hadn't rebooted in a long time, but when I did it last night akonadi ran my system out of memory very rapidly ( within a minute or two) made the system un responsive. I decided to let it go over night and see if all it really needed was to have enough time to finish so I turned the monitor off and let it run as I slept. But this morning the machine was back at a KDE login dialog and when I logged it the akonadi problem started up again. I had to turn it off very quickly just to get the use of my system back.

Once akonadi is turned off they system returns to normal and works as expected (except of akonadi related stuff) until I reboot and akonadi launches again...

[Kenneth (seetee)]

I have encountered this bug on two systems.

One is a reasonably new Lenovo Laptop and the other is a very old Dell Desktop (specifications available if anyone is interested).

On the desktop machine it started when I upgraded to Oneiric. My first two approaches was to install the Kubuntu-ppa and then the Kubuntu-ppa/backports. Neither did any good, the problem remained.

When I check htop I find an insane list of processes; akonadi akonadi_agent_launcher, mysql-processes related to akonadi and so on. The only way to get a working system is to kill them all.

I tried 'akonadictl restart' and 'akonadictl stop' with no noticeable result.

But I have a vague memory of the laptop not having this problem any more. It was replaced with a newer model (that did not suffer from this bug) this last christmas, so I have not used it in some time. In a week I might be able to check that out again, and report back what is different with it.

[Kenneth (seetee)]

In trying to find a solution, I turned to !Kubuntu, !Kde and #Akonadi on Identi.ca.

http://identi.ca/conversation/90218452#notice-90451182

As you can see I ended up configuring a cron-job to run a script file with the following:

killall -9 akonadi_agent_launcher akonadiserver akonadi_control akonaditray akonadi_maildispatcher_agent akonadi_nepomuk_feeder

Worked like a charm, but it was set to run every second minute, quite unnecessarily. But then I got a new suggestion.

http://identi.ca/conversation/90237050#notice-90451490
http://identi.ca/notice/90452298

And it worked. So the simple solution is to go to ${HOME}/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc and disable Akonadi. It does not fix the bug, but it gives you a working system.

[Dirk Seidel (dseidel)]

I ran into this problem this morning. Everything was fine on the first boot. Then I did a hard switch off of my computer (this was not related to akonadi). After starting it again akonadi now fills up the memory very quickly.

Unfortunately disabling akonadi permanently is no option for me as I use kmail for all my mails which relies on akonadi. So at the moment I do not have access to any of my e-mails, which is a disaster and I have to find a solution to this as soon as possible.

[Dirk Seidel (dseidel)]

There is some explanation here:
http://blogs.kde.org/node/4503

In my case it was not enough to delete $HOME/.local/share/akonadi, I also had to delete $HOME/.config/akonadi and then restart akonadi and update the akonadi configuration. Everything is fine again now.

If this happens to a newcomer to Linux, he or she will most probably be lost and will be sitting in front of an unusable system, at least if there is no second computer to look for a solution to the problem...

[DeMus (jan-mussche)]

Yesterday I installed Kubuntu 13.04 and got the same problems as other users in this thread. First I thought it was caused by the relatively new Kubuntu version so I switched back to 12.04 LTS. This did not help, I got the same problem:
CPU at 100% in 1-2 minutes
4GB ram filled up, after which swap memory (also 4G) was filled entirely.

I then (using a laptop) found a way to not start akonadi and now my system is back to normal.

It is strange since I did use 12.04 before and then this did not happen. Maybe since the latest KDE updates this was introduced.

[Victor Hugo Schulz (schulz89)]

I followed the guidelines provided by Dirk Seidel (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/akonadi/+bug/909022/comments/7) and the problem is gone. I'm running Trisquel 6.0 LTS.

[Rohan Garg (rohangarg)]

 Hi there!

Thanks for reporting this bug! Your bug seems to be a problem with the KDE program itself, and not with our KDE packages. But don't worry! This issue is being tracked by the KDE developers at: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=289920. Once fixed in KDE, it will be included in Kubuntu once the KDE version the fix is in in reaches Kubuntu.

Thanks!

[Rfkd (rfkd)]

Still present in KDE/akonadi 4.13.2.

[Kicer (kicer86)]

same here on Akonadi 1.13.0

[Kdenis (kdenis)]

This bug has only been reported for versions older than KDEPIM 4.14 (at most akonadi-1.3). Can anyone tell if this bug still present?

If noone confirms this bug for a recent version of akonadi (part of KDE Applications 15.08 or later), it gets closed in about three months.

[Nikolai Försterling (thefoster)]

Don't know whetherit is the same reason as back in 2011, but there's still a major performance impact of mysqld/akonadiserver in Kubuntu 18.04 (akonadiserver 5.7.3).
mysqld takes 25% and akonadiserver 20% CPU permanently.
I did the delete (.local/share/akonadi and .config/akonadi) a few months ago (on 16.10), but a few days later the issue has been back again.
I have 12 imap ressources configured, but told them to just sync from twice a day up to 4x/day, so this can't be the reason.
Strange feeling to just browse the web (not even having kmail open) with cooler sounds like playing a HQ game... :-/