tomboy writes to disk every 10 seconds even when idle

[mukesh agrawal]

Binary package hint: tomboy

After upgrading to 8.04, I noticed that something was hitting the disk every 10 seconds. Some diagnosis shows that the files affected are in ~.wapi, and that those files are being used by Tomboy.

$ while true; do find . -mmin -1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls --full-time -ltr; echo; sleep 1; done
-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 252905 2008-04-26 22:06:54.000000000 -0700 ./.mozilla/firefox/gudrke3v.default/sessionstore.js
-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 3686404 2008-04-26 22:07:31.000000000 -0700 ./.wapi/shared_fileshare-qube-Linux-i686-36-11-0
-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 1277960 2008-04-26 22:07:31.000000000 -0700 ./.wapi/shared_data-qube-Linux-i686-312-11-0

[9 seconds of output clipped]

-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 252905 2008-04-26 22:06:54.000000000 -0700 ./.mozilla/firefox/gudrke3v.default/sessionstore.js
-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 3686404 2008-04-26 22:07:41.000000000 -0700 ./.wapi/shared_fileshare-qube-Linux-i686-36-11-0
-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 1277960 2008-04-26 22:07:41.000000000 -0700 ./.wapi/shared_data-qube-Linux-i686-312-11-0

[9 seconds of output clipped]

-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 252905 2008-04-26 22:06:54.000000000 -0700 ./.mozilla/firefox/gudrke3v.default/sessionstore.js
-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 3686404 2008-04-26 22:07:51.000000000 -0700 ./.wapi/shared_fileshare-qube-Linux-i686-36-11-0
-rw------- 1 mukesh mukesh 1277960 2008-04-26 22:07:51.000000000 -0700 ./.wapi/shared_data-qube-Linux-i686-312-11-0

$ lsof -n | grep wapi
tomboy 12832 mukesh mem REG 8,3 3686404 1737315 /home/mukesh/.wapi/shared_fileshare-qube-Linux-i686-36-11-0
tomboy 12832 mukesh mem REG 8,3 1277960 1736941 /home/mukesh/.wapi/shared_data-qube-Linux-i686-312-11-0

Note that while I only noticed this in 8.04, I can't say for certain that it didn't exist in 7.10 -- just that I never noticed it before.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

for me it is every 40 seconds.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Still an issue with the intrepid version of it?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!.

[Adam Buchbinder (adam-buchbinder)]

Confirmed on Intrepid Alpha 6 with tomboy 0.11.3-0ubuntu1, and on a fully-updated install with tomboy 0.12.0-0ubuntu1. The update interval appears to be forty seconds.

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

Found this related bug in upstream, might be the same thing:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=514434

[Adam Buchbinder (adam-buchbinder)]

This has been filed upstream for mono on its io-layer component; while there's a workaround to disable IPC mechanisms, it still seems pretty silly to be writing to the disk on behalf of idle applications, even if those apps use IPC.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

The fix for tomboy is now in Jaunty.

[Motin (motin)]

Is this really fixed? Using pidstat -d 3 I find tomboy still writes to disk every around 20 seconds:

12.37.09 PID kB_rd/s kB_wr/s kB_ccwr/s Command
12.37.12 5194 0,00 1,33 0,00 tomboy

12.37.27 PID kB_rd/s kB_wr/s kB_ccwr/s Command
12.37.30 5194 0,00 1,33 0,00 tomboy

12.37.48 PID kB_rd/s kB_wr/s kB_ccwr/s Command
12.37.51 5194 0,00 1,33 0,00 tomboy

The find command about did not show anything for me, so this may be another similar bug. How do I know?

[cmcginty (casey-mcginty)]

I still have this issue in Jaunty. The access pattern is:

30 seconds, 10 seconds,
30 seconds, 10 seconds,

So it is obviously not fixed.

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Fixed in Karmic. Honest!

[Brownout (brownout)]

> Fixed in Karmic. Honest!

Really?
Idle, no plugins enabled.
05:14:40 PM PID kB_rd/s kB_wr/s kB_ccwr/s Command
05:14:43 PM 4351 0.00 2.67 0.00 tomboy
05:15:13 PM 4351 0.00 2.67 0.00 tomboy
05:15:52 PM 4351 0.00 2.67 0.00 tomboy
05:16:31 PM 4351 0.00 2.67 0.00 tomboy
05:17:13 PM 4351 0.00 2.67 0.00 tomboy

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

Brownout, the Mono bug was fixed. If you're having issues, it's probably something new/different, so please open a new bug against Tomboy.

[mukesh agrawal (launchpad-net-mukesh)]

Sandy: unless I'm misunderstanding launchpad's UI, this is a bug against Tomboy. At the top of this page, it says:

Ubuntu >> “tomboy” package >> Bugs >> Bug #222907

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

Mukesh: Let me be a bit more clear: this bug should no longer exist in Karmic, at all.

This bug was fixed in Mono, and Tomboy even applied a work around (almost a year go, see the upstream bug) for users with older versions of Mono installed.

If you are experiencing frequent write issues with Tomboy, it's probably something new/different, so please file a new bug against Tomboy.

[mukesh agrawal (launchpad-net-mukesh)]

Got it. Thanks for the clarification.