kio_thumbnail uses 100% CPU and eats RAM
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
kdebase-runtime (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
No idea which package to file this against.
lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 10.10
Release: 10.10
I've only noticed this after "upgrading" to KDE 4.6.2. With 4.6.1 it never happened.
After a day or so of uptime I start to notice increasing amounts of hard disc activity. This can occur at any time - when the computer is idle, when I'm in the middle of sending an email, whatever. There appears to be no pattern to it. The cause is the process kio_thumbnail - which is thrashing the hard disc like crazy, using 100% of the CPU, and gradually eating RAM (the last time I saw it it was using 2 Gigs of RAM, and climbing).
There appears to be no way to kill this process - killall kio_thumbnail has no effect, and killing it via the pid either crashes KDE, or KDE just starts it up again.
Usually it will calm down for a while, only to start up again some time later. Each time it gets worse and worse until eventually there is no course of action left but to reboot. I don't have any open windows which would require thumbnails to be created, so I've no idea what KDE thinks it's doing.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: kubuntu-desktop 1.205
ProcVersionSign
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelMo
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Apr 16 02:42:39 2011
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
LANGUAGE=
PATH=(custom, user)
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: kubuntu-meta
affects: | ubuntu → kdebase-runtime (Ubuntu) |
I think I have an idea what's causing this. In Dolphin there is an option for 'Do not create previews for local files above :'. I had this set to 25MB, so as to get previews of my Nikon RAW (NEF) files. I've now set this to 8MB and am no longer noticing the behaviour I described above. I do still see kio_thumbnail use a lot of CPU when I open a directory, but it quickly drops back down again, and also it stops if I close the Dolphin window. This was not the case when I had the limit set to 25MB.