gnome-appearance-properties hangs and spins CPU

[BrandonS]

Binary package hint: gnome-control-center

Seeing issues with gnome-appearance-properties in Intrepid. gnome-control-center: Installed: 1:2.24.0.1-0ubuntu7.1

Symptoms are the application will launch, but not appear on screen. CPU will drive up to 80% - 90% utilized. After about 1 - 2 minutes the application will actually open, allowing the user to change their settings.

Doing an strace on this application shows that it's going through /proc/mounts when launching. This is a problem here because we are using autofs5 with ldap and our /proc/mounts file is over 9000 lines long. I've deduced that it's spinning the CPU while trudging through our very large /proc/mounts file and this is why it's taking so long.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for your bug report. Could you please try to run it through GDB, and produce a backtrace during the hang? You can do this by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash.

However, as the program isn't crashing, what you need to do is interrupt it when it is iterating over your /proc/mounts, by pressing CTRL+C in the GDB window. You can then get a backtrace by running "backtrace full" whilst the program is halted.

Thanks in advance

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you have a custom .gtkrc? could you try to move it somewhere else if that's the case?

[BrandonS (brandonsqc)]

No, this has been shown with multiple user accounts even after wiping
out all of their .g* files.

--
Brandon J. Schwartz
IT Engineer, Sr.
<email address hidden>
x17208

Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> do you have a custom .gtkrc? could you try to move it somewhere else if
> that's the case?
>

[BrandonS (brandonsqc)]

GDB backtrace attached.

--
Brandon J. Schwartz
IT Engineer, Sr.
<email address hidden>
x17208

Chris Coulson wrote:
> Thank you for your bug report. Could you please try to run it through
> GDB, and produce a backtrace during the hang? You can do this by
> following the instructions at
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash.
>
> However, as the program isn't crashing, what you need to do is interrupt
> it when it is iterating over your /proc/mounts, by pressing CTRL+C in
> the GDB window. You can then get a backtrace by running "backtrace full"
> whilst the program is halted.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> ** Changed in: gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Low
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you get the issue on a new account or guest user session?

[BrandonS (brandonsqc)]

We don't use guest accounts here. Just standard user sessions. I've
noticed this behavior over multiple user accounts.

--
Brandon J. Schwartz
IT Engineer, Sr.
<email address hidden>
x17208

Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> do you get the issue on a new account or guest user session?
>
> ** Changed in: gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs)
> Status: Incomplete => New
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you try to strace the binary and see what it's doing? could be specific to some theme installed

[BrandonS (brandonsqc)]

Strace is attached.

As you can see it's opening /proc/mounts and reading from there for some
reason.

current /proc/mounts on the box is 9286 lines.

time gnome-appearance-properties

real 0m7.375s
user 0m1.376s
sys 0m3.588s

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

does it hang and spin CPU for ever or just while reading the mounts there?

[BrandonS (brandonsqc)]

Not forever, it eventually comes up. It just takes a while to do this,
and it spikes the CPU as it's doing this.

--
Brandon J. Schwartz
IT Engineer, Sr.
<email address hidden>
x17208

Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> does it hang and spin CPU for ever or just while reading the mounts
> there?
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

is the issue specific to this capplet? the mounts file is likely read by gvfs rather

[BrandonS (brandonsqc)]

Not certain. I've only ever seen the problem in this app, however it's
quite possible that it does happen in other apps as well.

--
Brandon J. Schwartz
IT Engineer, Sr.
<email address hidden>
x17208

Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> is the issue specific to this capplet? the mounts file is likely read by
> gvfs rather
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you try on jaunty too and describe an easy way to trigger the bug there?

[BrandonS (brandonsqc)]

The bug is not present in Jaunty. That's actually how I have had to
work with this image is to use the package from jaunty in my local sources.

--
Brandon J. Schwartz
IT Engineer, Sr.
<email address hidden>
x17208

Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> could you try on jaunty too and describe an easy way to trigger the bug
> there?
>
> ** Changed in: gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

closing since that works now

[BrandonS (brandonsqc)]

I'm sorry, you're closing this because I reported it works in Jaunty?
That's not exactly a great solution. Can this at least be back-ported
to Intrepid?

--
Brandon J. Schwartz
IT Engineer, Sr.
<email address hidden>
x17208

Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> closing since that works now
>
> ** Changed in: gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => Fix Released
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> you're closing this because I reported it works in Jaunty?

right, that's how most opensource bug trackers work, the bug is closed when fixed in the current version, launchpad allows to open tasks for other distribution versions if required but intrepid is not a lts and jaunty shapes to be a better and stabler version than intrepid and will be stable next week we will not spend efforts to backport a fix for a capplet issue only one user reported having now