high CPU usage when creating a new message in Evolution

[Andy Christianson]

Binary package hint: evolution

Ubuntu 8.04

Evolution 2.22.0-0ubuntu2

Expected Behavior: Create a new message with low CPU usage

What happened:

I have Evolution set up with only one account, which is an MS Exchange account. When I create a new message, or begin to reply to a new message, the CPU usage goes up to about 60% for the system (all used by Evolution). The CPU will go down only by restarting Evolution.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Apr 7 11:22:34 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evolution
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: evolution 2.22.0-0ubuntu2
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evolution
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-15-generic i686

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, does the same happens if you deactivate the exchange plugin? or not using the MS Exchange server?

[Andy Christianson (achristianson)]

OK, I've now tried deleting my exchange account, and setting up Evolution to use sendmail and no incoming accounts. That caused the issue to not happen any more. It must be in the exchange code.

[Andy Christianson (achristianson)]

Also, everyone else in my office that uses Linux (all Ubuntu, 3 people) has the same problem. Our exchange account is hosted by Rackspace, but I don't think that would have anything to do with it.

[Andy Christianson (achristianson)]

It's been a few days. How come this bug report is marked as incomplete? Do I need to provide any additional information? I will be happy to do so.

[Andy Christianson (achristianson)]

I didn't mean to put it back on evolution.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

well it needs to be confirmed by someone else with similar setup, thanks you.

[Andy Christianson (achristianson)]

I came across a new condition that should be very helpful in tracing the bug. When I enter in our Global Catalog server name, the issue does not happen anymore.

[Justin Searle (meeas) (meeas)]

I can confirm I am having the same issue. If an exchange account is enabled, it happens whether the new/reply email is sourced from the exchange account or any other account. If I disable the exchange account and restart evolution, this problem doesn't occur.

And to clarify, its not when you open up a separate window to view an existing email, only when you create a new window or reply to an email. It seems to be tied to any editable email window.

If anyone wants to wade through a strace file, I've attached two files. One experiencing the problem, and the other with the exchange account turned off so it doesn't cause the problems. Both were simply starting Evolution, open a "new email" window, letting it sit for ~60 seconds, and then closing Evolution. Look for the calls futex, writev, poll, gettimeofday, and read. They appear to be ones causing the problems. The easiest way to find it is to open both files up side-by-side and search for "gettimeofday" step for step. About 10-15 instances down, you'll start to see major repetition with gettimeofday and the other calls on the evolution-spike file.

[Ciprian Enache (ciprian-enache)]

Confirmed. I have an exchange account with global catalog name not filled in.

CPU usage spikes to 55%+ on New Message and doesn't go down until I restart evolution. From top:

      PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 5964 arm 20 0 43944 6068 2064 S 31 0.3 20:59.10 gconfd-2
14752 arm 20 0 384m 16m 9976 S 30 0.8 0:16.54 evolution-excha
14749 arm 20 0 621m 57m 21m S 26 2.9 0:17.56 evolution

Affected: evolution, evolution-exchange & gconfd-2.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

May someone experiencing the problem forward this upstream at bugzilla.gnome.org? For filing instructions please have a look to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME ; leaving this as incomplete until it gets forwarded, thanks.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to 'New'. Thanks again!

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

I forwarded it
Bug 543022 – Exchange plugin unusable if Global Catalog server setting is blank

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_activity.cgi?id=543022

It is definitely a bug, and it seems easy to fix since there is a very simple user workaround.

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

I have forwarded it. This is one of the easiest bugs to reproduce that I have ever filed, and it has one of the easiest workarounds, so this should be low-hanging fruit. I hope the Ubuntu team can backport a fix quickly once upstream fixes it.

[Tim Richardson (tim-richardson)]

And just to be clear, you can add me to the list of users who sees this bug.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's not an evolution bug

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the issue is somewhat similar to bug #236171, do you still get it using the current version?

[Ciprian Enache (ciprian-enache)]

Issue is fixed for me in Evolution 2.22.3.1. Suddenly my notebook became a lot cooler while sending / receiving e-mail.