chromium browser chews 100% CPU in epoll_wait()

[James Hunt]

This happens frequently (I have a script that monitors CPU usage).

$ top -b -n1 | head
top - 07:44:06 up 30 min, 3 users, load average: 1.35, 1.08, 0.82
Tasks: 329 total, 2 running, 327 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 17.4 us, 1.6 sy, 0.4 ni, 80.1 id, 0.5 wa, 0.1 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem: 12182444 total, 5215508 used, 6966936 free, 338356 buffers
KiB Swap: 12455932 total, 0 used, 12455932 free. 2614244 cached Mem

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
16165 james 20 0 1428628 72860 50624 R 95.5 0.6 3:11.69 chromium-browse
 2908 james 20 0 1329964 485940 87724 S 12.7 4.0 2:17.25 firefox
15993 james 20 0 3303180 257376 104592 S 6.4 2.1 0:18.28 chromium-browse
$ sudo cat /proc/16165/stack
[<ffffffffffffffff>] 0xffffffffffffffff
$ sudo strace -fFv -s 1024 -p 16165
Process 16165 attached with 9 threads
[pid 16241] futex(0x7fe0ff7fdac4, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 1, NULL <unfinished ...>
[pid 16182] futex(0x7fe0ffffeac4, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 1, NULL <unfinished ...>
[pid 16181] futex(0x7fe1279b7f88, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 0, NULL <unfinished ...>
[pid 16179] futex(0x7fe1279e7e68, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 0, NULL <unfinished ...>
[pid 16178] futex(0x7fe1279d00f8, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 0, NULL <unfinished ...>
[pid 16180] futex(0x7fe1279eeb88, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 0, NULL <unfinished ...>
[pid 16177] futex(0x7fe1279fa918, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 0, NULL <unfinished ...>
[pid 16176] epoll_wait(3,
^C

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: chromium-browser 34.0.1847.116-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.15.0-1.5-generic 3.15.0-rc5
Uname: Linux 3.15.0-1-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.2-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Wed May 21 07:42:35 2014
Desktop-Session:
 DESKTOP_SESSION = ubuntu
 XDG_CONFIG_DIRS = /etc/xdg/xdg-ubuntu:/usr/share/upstart/xdg:/etc/xdg
 XDG_DATA_DIRS = /usr/share/ubuntu:/usr/share/gnome:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/
Env:
 MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH = None
 LD_LIBRARY_PATH = None
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-11 (39 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Daily amd64 (20140409)
SourcePackage: chromium-browser
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to utopic on 2014-05-08 (12 days ago)
gconf-keys: /desktop/gnome/applications/browser/exec = b'firefox\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https/command = b'sensible-browser %s\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/https/enabled = b'true\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/command = b'sensible-browser %s\n'/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/enabled = b'true\n'/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager = b''/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager = b''/desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme = b'gnome\n'/desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme = b'Clearlooks\n'
modified.conffile..etc.default.chromium.browser: [deleted]
mtime.conffile..etc.chromium.browser.default: 2014-05-06T16:47:55.748923

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Looks like this might be being caused by flashplugin. After closing a few tabs the problem is no longer recreatable.

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

After performing a few tests, the problem seems to be that if a tab using youtube's html5 player exists at browser start, chromium will spin @ 100% cpu. Closing that tab makes the cpu usage drop to normal levels.

What is odd is that if no youtube html5 tab exists at startup and I then create a new tab and visit the same URL, the problem is not observed, so it seems it might be a bug related to auto-playing html5 embedded media?

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Interestingly, the problem is also seen if chromium is restarted and one of the tabs is http://translate.google.com - closing that tab resolves the cpu usage issue, and subsequently opening a new tab and going to http://translate.google.com does *not* manifest the problem.

[Nathan Teodosio (nteodosio)]

Please bump if still reproducible.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for chromium-browser (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]