mail-notifcation hogging the CPU polling when internet connection lost

Bug #2462 reported by Andy Lynch
108
This bug affects 8 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Mail Notification
New
Undecided
Unassigned
mail-notification (Fedora)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned
mail-notification (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Medium
Unassigned
Nominated for Karmic by Johannes Hessellund

Bug Description

When the system is idle, mail-notifcation process consumes ~80% of the CPU. This usually starts happening after
running for a few hours.

I have a delay between checks of 2 minutes, and two accounts configured - one IMAP server (with IDLE support), and GMail.

Ethereal shows the process repeatedly establishing SSL connections to www.google.com, more than once per second(!).

Stack from gdb:
0xffffe410 in ?? ()
(gdb) bt
#0 0xffffe410 in ?? ()
#1 0xbf8575d8 in ?? ()
#2 0x0001986d in ?? ()
#3 0x00000004 in ?? ()
#4 0xb6a190f4 in poll () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#5 0xb755c2e8 in g_main_context_check () from /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0
#6 0xb755c783 in g_main_loop_run () from /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0
#7 0xb7a57606 in gtk_main () from /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
#8 0x08087a47 in main ()

Changed in mail-notification:
assignee: nobody → motu
Revision history for this message
Ante Karamatić (ivoks) wrote :

Does it checks email at all? Despite it's high CPU usage.

Revision history for this message
Ante Karamatić (ivoks) wrote :

Gmail did some changes with their authorization. gmail-notify has same problems with gmail accounts. Please, remove gmail account and report if that fix problems.

Revision history for this message
Koen Sadza (koen) wrote :

I have the same problem after waking up from suspend without an internet connection...

Revision history for this message
Martin Ammermüller (martin-ammermueller) wrote :

same here with a normal POP3 account, no TLS or SSL, using USER/PASS authentication

Revision history for this message
frogzoo (frogzoo) wrote :

Confirming this.
Mail-notification goes to 100% trying to connect to a pop3 account whenever the network is disconnected.

So I imagine the 100% applies whenever connection fails.

The 100% cpu is a major pain, as it kills your battery life double quick. It makes mail-notification on laptops a serious liability.

Changed in mail-notification:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
frogzoo (frogzoo) wrote : reportbug-mail-notification

Reportbug output for mail-notification

Revision history for this message
joehill (joseph-hill) wrote : Re: mail-notifcation hogging the CPU polling for GMail

I'm having the same problem, not with GMail but with my university's mail. It sometimes takes up between 70-90% CPU, and at that time it doesn't appear when new mail is received. Ethereal does not tell me that it is making a lot of requests though. If I kill it and restart, usage goes back down to between 1-2% and the icon appears when new mail arrives. Network is connected, mail server is working. It is after a hibernate (although I can't be sure it doesn't happen before hibernate, as I'm almost always working post-hibernation).

Revision history for this message
Lyonel Vincent (lyonel) wrote :

Same thing here: network connectivity loss makes mail-notification consume 100% CPU, which makes it very problematic on a laptop.
Forcing mail-notification to update its status (by running `mail-notification -u`)seems to bring CPU usage back to normal (it doesn't prevent the problem from popping back later, though).

Revision history for this message
Stephen Sinclair (radarsat1) wrote :

I'd just like to report that this bug is still in effect. I just installed mail-notification in my Gutsy laptop and am seeing 100% CPU usage. I haven't experienced it often enough to identify a pattern yet, it just seems to kick in after running mail-notification for a while. I haven't had a chance to try the "-u" option yet.
This makes mail-notification much less useful, unfortunately, and there sadly seems to be few options for well-integrated mail notification under Gnome.

Revision history for this message
condorloco (christian-cmwt) wrote :

I can confirm this bug on my HP TC4200 notebook and an IMAP e-mail account. Whenever there is no network connection available, after some time mail-notification has a CPU usage of 80-100%.

Revision history for this message
the_mechanical (mechanical) wrote : Re: mail-notifcation hogging the CPU polling for (G)Mail

Same problem with Gutsy (testing) @ Desktop.
I installed mail-notification from the source (http://www.nongnu.org/mailnotify/) because i need SSL.
I don't have GMail but it appears the same problem. I have some POP3 and IMAP mailboxes (with and without SSL), so i didn't figured out yet which one (or if all) are the problem. The problem appears after some time, can be half an hour or more (seems randomly).
I tried to reinstall the program but it didn't help.

I had the same configuration of mailboxes with Edgy and mail-notification 3.0 (also from source) and it worked perfect!

Revision history for this message
the_mechanical (mechanical) wrote :

Maybe i should add some informations:
Using Ubuntu Gutsy testing/beta (7.10)
* Linux 2.6.22-12-generic #1 SMP Thu Sep 20 18:51:18 GMT 2007 i686 GNU/Linux
* mail-notification 4.1 (built from source - http://www.nongnu.org/mailnotify/)
* Pop3 with and without SSL, all IMAP with SSL/TSL
* Gnome 2.20.0
* Compiz 0.5.2
* Network connection over VPN, i use vpnc

Revision history for this message
Xamusk (ronanpaixao) wrote : Re: mail-notifcation hogging the CPU polling for GMail

I can also confirm having this problem in Gutsy.
I have noticed this problem since I started using mail-notification (which I don't remember if that was in Dapper of Feisty).
Also, this happens even with only POP3.
The way to fix it is to reestablish the connection and tell it to update through the pop-up menu.
If one tells it to update without a connection, it drops CPU usage for some time and then it usually return to 100%.

Revision history for this message
arno_b (arno.b) wrote :

I have the same problem on Feisty and Gusty with a pop account: it happens each time I start my laptop without any network connection.

Revision history for this message
Brice Terzaghi (terzag) wrote :

Same problem here with Gutsy: on a PC that has no internet connexion, mail-notification jumps to 90-100 % CPU usage when it can't connect to the configured accounts (using POP and GMail).

Revision history for this message
Dennis Schulmeister (dennis-schulmeister) wrote :

Hi,

just to tell that the bug still is in effect. I'm experiencing it on the third laptop now. Whenever the Internet connection is unavailable mail-notification quickly eats up to 100% of one CPU. At least on a dual core system that leaves one CPU for serious work.

My personal workaround is
$ sudo killall mail-notification
whenever I'm out in the field.

Thanks a lot,
Dennis

Revision history for this message
Dim Zoom (dimzoom) wrote :

if i am offline or have the little mail icon applet online all my processor ressources are taken by mail-notification. If i remove the applet the CPU usage instantly decrease to normal usage.
I'am using hardy. Do you need more informations about my system ?
Thanks.

zorkm (zorkmark)
Changed in mail-notification:
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Lutfi (lutfiarab) wrote :

This still happen on Hardy with new package from getdeb:

dpkg -l mail-notification
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-f/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/t-aWait/T-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-=================================-=================================-==================================================================================
ii mail-notification 5.4-0~getdeb1 mail notification in system tray

Eating my 100%CPU

Revision history for this message
Daniel T Chen (crimsun) wrote :

Lowering importance.

(getdeb packages are not supported)

Changed in mail-notification:
importance: Medium → Low
Revision history for this message
Stephen Sinclair (radarsat1) wrote : Re: [Bug 2462] Re: mail-notifcation hogging the CPU polling for GMail

It's a universe package!

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-f/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/t-aWait/T-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
un mail-notificat <none> (no description available)

Revision history for this message
Harrison Conlin (harrisony) wrote : Re: mail-notifcation hogging the CPU polling for GMail

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

Changed in mail-notification:
assignee: motu → harrisony
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Stephen Sinclair (radarsat1) wrote :

I just tried it on my laptop for an hour, (running Intrepid), and it didn't seem to be an issue. I'll keep running it for a while to monitor it.

Revision history for this message
arno_b (arno.b) wrote :

I still have this issue each time a disconnect my laptop from Internet, using Intrepid and a pop account
Not fixed.

Revision history for this message
KAding (kadingf) wrote :

I also still have this issue. I have had it on every version of Ubuntu with every laptop I've had since 2006 at least. Currently I am using intrepid. If I have no internet connection mail notification will start using 100% of one of my dual core CPUs. This does not happen instantly at boot, however, but usually after a few minutes.

I am using fastmail.fm as mail host (IMAP).

Revision history for this message
Harrison Conlin (harrisony) wrote :

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as Triaged and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better

Changed in mail-notification:
assignee: harrisony → nobody
importance: Low → Medium
status: Incomplete → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Johannes Hessellund (osos) wrote :

Anyone looking at this issue ?

Revision history for this message
Jason Heeris (detly) wrote :

Whoever might be looking at this, are you aware that someone has supplied a patch in the duplicate report #182923?

See:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mail-notification/+bug/182923

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