/usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-afc-volume-monitor kills polar bears

[Steve Langasek]

* Impact:
On an idle system, powertop shows gvfs-afc-volume-monitor waking up once per second.

* Test case:
run powertop and look at the number of wakeups due to gvfs-afc-volume-monitor

* Regression potential:
check that afc devices (ipod, ipad) are still correctly detected with the update

--------------

Binary package hint: gvfs

On an idle system, powertop shows gvfs-afc-volume-monitor waking up once per second. To do what, I cannot say; gvfs-afc-volume-monitor appears to be a monitor for iPods and iPads, neither of which have I ever had connected to ths machine. This constantly polling daemon looks to me like a failure to understand and integrate with udev. Please think of the polar bears, and get rid of this pointless daemon.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gvfs-backends 1.6.4-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.33-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Oct 6 13:53:41 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gvfs

[Cristian Klein (cristiklein)]

The problem can be more precisely trace to libusbmuxd.

To connect to i* devices, gvfs-afc-volume-monitor uses libusbmuxd which talks to the usbmuxd daemon. The latter is normally not present in a system and is automatically launched by udev, when an i* device is connect. gvfs-afc-volume-monitor has no way of knowing when the usbmuxd daemon is launched, so it tries to connect to it every second (see libusbmuxd.c line 151).

I have no idea how this bug could be easily fixed.

[Cristian Klein (cristiklein)]

Hello,

This bug should be solved in the latest GIT version upstream [1][2][3].

[1] http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=usbmuxd.git;a=commitdiff;h=02252a478689c5bb22552a3bce06b7bbe234cb6c
[2] http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=usbmuxd.git;a=commitdiff;h=b38a8ebaebc6a14a1ba17f36e9cb6e5b8e405c6a
[3] http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=usbmuxd.git;a=commitdiff;h=31cd1980051bfffeda2ef7cac2986548a2e98107

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Thanks for finding the culprit! Since this hasn't been committed to an Ubuntu package branch yet, marking this as 'triaged'.

[Ahmad Syukri Abdollah (syockit)]

The latest version 1.0.7-1 has all the commits as mentioned per comment #3. Yet, I came across this bug again not long ago, which subsided only after a reboot. I've yet to figure out how to reproduce the bug.

[Chrescht (sekateur)]

I'm having this issue in one lucid machine after plugging in an iphone..but not every time which is strange.
Installed version of usbmuxd is 1.0.2 so I don't think it will work any-time soon.

[Alik (kilaka)]

Happens on 11.10 as well.
Takes 100% cpu.

See related askubuntu question: http://askubuntu.com/questions/21039/gvfs-afc-volume-monitor-uses-a-lot-of-cpu

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

And on 12.10 - can we get this fixed?

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

I measured this with perf, typically this is wasting ~65K CPU cycles per second.

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

After patching usbmuxd to actually build with inotify support i no longer see gvfs-afc-volume-monitor wakups using powertop in raring. The patch should be easy enough to SRU into quantal & precise. Is that wanted/needed?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package usbmuxd - 1.0.8-1ubuntu1

---------------
usbmuxd (1.0.8-1ubuntu1) raring; urgency=low

  * Correctly find inotify.h to build with inotify support (LP: #656009).
 -- Dmitrijs Ledkovs <email address hidden> Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:26:52 +0000

[Peter Meiser (meiser79)]

Just tested in precise and inotify support is built in with the find-inotify-multiarch.path.

Please find attached the debdiff.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Whoopie: Thanks for the work, the quantal debdiff include-binaries's changes seems like an error, I've filtered them out and sponsored both updates

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Hello Steve, or anyone else affected,

Accepted usbmuxd into precise-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usbmuxd/1.0.7-2ubuntu0.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Hello Steve, or anyone else affected,

Accepted usbmuxd into quantal-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usbmuxd/1.0.8-1ubuntu0.1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, and change the tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Peter Meiser (meiser79)]

Works fine here. And buildlog also shows that inotify support is enabled: "libusbmuxd will be built with inotify support."

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Whoopie on which release does it work fine?

[Peter Meiser (meiser79)]

@Brian: I tested on precise, but the buildlog for both precise and quantal look fine.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package usbmuxd - 1.0.8-1ubuntu0.1

---------------
usbmuxd (1.0.8-1ubuntu0.1) quantal-proposed; urgency=low

  * Correctly find inotify.h to build with inotify support (LP: #656009).
 -- Whoopie <email address hidden> Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:56:59 +0100

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package usbmuxd - 1.0.7-2ubuntu0.1

---------------
usbmuxd (1.0.7-2ubuntu0.1) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * Correctly find inotify.h to build with inotify support (LP: #656009).
 -- Whoopie <email address hidden> Mon, 04 Feb 2013 09:53:28 +0100

[roachkv (roachkv)]

I continue to have the above mentioned issue.

I'm running precise and have version 1.0.7-2ubuntu0.1 of usbmuxd installed.

[roman mavrichev (roman-mavrichev)]

I also have this problem on usbmuxd (1.0.7-2ubuntu0.1)