Consumes all CPU, logs a lot of output

Bug #340515 reported by Andrew Conkling
138
This bug affects 18 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gnome-session
New
High
vino
Fix Released
Medium
vino (Ubuntu)
Incomplete
High
Unassigned
Declined for Jaunty by Sebastien Bacher
Declined for Karmic by Sebastien Bacher

Bug Description

Binary package hint: gnome-session

Release of Ubuntu: 9.04
Package Version: 2.25.92-0ubuntu1

gnome-session has been consuming all my CPU for about a week, and recently I've noticed that my daemon.log and syslog files are over 1 GB in a day.

I'm not sure how to troubleshoot this, but I am attaching the most recent 1000 lines of each log file.

Revision history for this message
Andrew Conkling (andrewski) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Andrew Conkling (andrewski) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Thank you for your bug report. First of all, could you disable vino-server from autostarting by running "gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /desktop/gnome/remote_access/enabled false", then log out and back in again. Once you have done this, could you please run "/usr/lib/vino/vino-server" from a terminal and paste any output that you see (I want to see if it's crashing first)

Thanks

Changed in gnome-session:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Andrew Conkling (andrewski) wrote : Re: [Bug 340515] Re: Consumes all CPU, logs a lot of output

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 14:29, Chris Coulson
<email address hidden>wrote:

> Thank you for your bug report. First of all, could you disable vino-
> server from autostarting by running "gconftool-2 --set --type=bool
> /desktop/gnome/remote_access/enabled false", then log out and back in
> again. Once you have done this, could you please run "/usr/lib/vino
> /vino-server" from a terminal and paste any output that you see (I want
> to see if it's crashing first)

Thanks for the fast response! I am working remotely right now (only have VNC
access to my computer), so I couldn't do that at the moment, but does that
perhaps answer the question of whether vino is crashing? I have been using
it throughout the day to view my desktop (indeed, that's how I attached the
logs to this bug) so I know it's at least partially working. :)

That said, I'll send along any output as soon as I can.

Revision history for this message
Andrew Conkling (andrewski) wrote :

Okay, first of all, deactivating vino immediately brought my CPU back to normal. So that's good; we know what caused the problem. :)

Here's the output from vino-server:
10/03/2009 21:36:07 Autoprobing TCP port in (all) network interface
10/03/2009 21:36:07 Listening IPv{4,6}://*:5900
10/03/2009 21:36:07 Autoprobing selected port 5900
10/03/2009 21:36:07 Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18)
10/03/2009 21:36:07 Advertising authentication type: 'VNC Authentication' (2)
10/03/2009 21:36:07 Advertising security type: 'VNC Authentication' (2)
10/03/2009 21:37:43 [IPv6] Got connection from client Drewbuntu
10/03/2009 21:37:43 other clients:

It did not crash and, as you can see, I connected through Vinagre/Remote Desktop Viewer.

I re-enabled vino in the Remote Desktop preferences and immediately the CPU jumped. What's weird is that gconfd shows a pretty steady CPU usage; gnome-session is around 2-3%, gconfd is at 1%. Related?

Changed in gnome-session:
status: Incomplete → New
Revision history for this message
Andrew Conkling (andrewski) wrote :

Also, I'm assuming this is more a vino bug than a gnome-session one, but I won't change the product as I'm not sure of that.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Yes, if you manually start vino-server then enable it in Remote Desktop Preferences afterwards, this sets the AutostartCondition to true and causes gnome-session to start another instance. This instance immediately exits though because there is already one running, which triggers this endless cycle of restarts you're seeing.

If the first instance of vino-server is registering with gnome-session, then I think that's a gnome-session bug (I can't check that until I get home later though).

Revision history for this message
Andrew Conkling (andrewski) wrote :

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 04:40, Chris Coulson
<email address hidden>wrote:

> Yes, if you manually start vino-server then enable it in Remote Desktop
> Preferences afterwards, this sets the AutostartCondition to true and
> causes gnome-session to start another instance. This instance
> immediately exits though because there is already one running, which
> triggers this endless cycle of restarts you're seeing.

Not quite what happened. I had started vino-server manually, then quit it.
Then, separately, I re-enabled the automatic support that I had initially
disabled (via gconftool).

So: when starting vino manually, it works fine; when started through Remote
Desktop/gconf, it works but uses all the CPU.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Are you sure that the first instance actually quit before you tried to enable the automatic loading via gconf?

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :
Changed in gnome-session:
importance: Undecided → High
milestone: none → ubuntu-9.04-beta
status: New → Triaged
Changed in gnome-session:
assignee: nobody → desktop-bugs
Changed in gnome-session:
status: Unknown → New
Revision history for this message
Andrew Conkling (andrewski) wrote :

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 17:24, Chris Coulson
<email address hidden>wrote:

> Are you sure that the first instance actually quit before you tried to
> enable the automatic loading via gconf?
>

Yes, quite sure. `ps -A | grep vino` returns nothing, but then immediately
enabling vino via gconf makes the CPU jump to 100%.

Thanks for filing upstream; I'll add my comment there also.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

is that still an issue? there has been no other bugs about that, not sure if the bug should be milestoned for jaunty or not

Changed in gnome-session (Ubuntu):
milestone: ubuntu-9.04-beta → ubuntu-9.04
Revision history for this message
Andrew Conkling (andrewski) wrote :

I wouldn't have expected so—with no upstream attention and no noticeable updates—so I hadn't attempted again, but I just tried right now and it seems to be fixed. Whatever it was must've been some growing pains.

Changed in gnome-session:
status: Triaged → Fix Released
Changed in gnome-session:
status: New → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

The issue still to be still there for some users see the new duplicate

Changed in gnome-session (Ubuntu):
milestone: ubuntu-9.04 → none
status: Fix Released → Triaged
affects: gnome-session (Ubuntu) → vino (Ubuntu)
Changed in vino:
status: Unknown → New
Revision history for this message
dirk (dirk-kuijsten) wrote :

I can confirm that this is still a problem for me. After upgrading from 8.10 the cpu was still high and I saw this was caused by vino. After disabling it from the system preferences menu "remote desktop", the cpu usage immediately goes down. Stopping the autostart with gconftool-2 as descibed above, logging off and on again, and then trying to reenable it in the remote desktop menu gives 100% cpu again (confirmed that vino wasn't running before this with ps). Thus there still is a bug somewhere.

Revision history for this message
chalkdust41485 (chalkdust41485) wrote :

Same here as dirk

Revision history for this message
Jonathan Lozinski (j-lozinski) wrote :

I noticed this and it took me a while to find what was responsible. For me when viewing processes in system monitor there was an un-named process which kept respawning, dieing and creating a new process every second or so.

I tracked it to vino-server. I think the problem with eating processor must relate to some threading code.

Revision history for this message
Shahar Or (mightyiam) wrote :

Dear Jonathan,

These are known issues. Please check the upstream reports.]

Many blessings.

Revision history for this message
Alessandro Morgantini (gpz500) wrote :

@Paolo Benvenuto (from duplicated bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vino/+bug/371356)
I reproduced the bug on my system enabling "Automatically remember running applications when logging out" in the Options tab of System->Preferences->Startup Applications.
Perhaps have you enabled this?
If so, please disable it and try to repeat the instructions in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vino/+bug/371356/comments/15.

Revision history for this message
Paolo Benvenuto (donpaolo) wrote :

Followed the instructions at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vino/+bug/371356/comments/15, result:

restarting the sessione all is ok, no 2nd vino-server instance

But when I reboot the bug is there: the 2nd instance is trying to run and the cpu is busy.

I cant' understand why the reboot process provokes a different result than restarting the session.

Changed in gnome-session:
status: Fix Released → New
Revision history for this message
trukin (trukin) wrote :

This seems to happen only when dual monitors are turned off. After upgrading today to Jaunty, my dual monitor setup was disabled - mirror screen only -- and after enabling the second screen, it seems like the high cpu usage started back.

Changed in gnome-session:
importance: Unknown → High
Changed in vino:
importance: Unknown → Medium
Changed in vino:
status: New → Fix Released
Changed in vino (Ubuntu):
assignee: Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs) → nobody
Revision history for this message
Arie Skliarouk (skliarie) wrote :

Same problem on ubuntu 11.04 (natty).
The machine's IP number sits on the br0 interface.

If I try to disable the network settings (uncheck "Allow other users to view your desktop) and then enable them - it detects the IP number properly, but VNC connection does not work (I see black screen) and vino-server uses 100% CPU.
when I open the configuration window again (takes about a minute to open), it shows only "localhost".

Revision history for this message
Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e) wrote :

If you are still experiencing this bug, please:

1. Add the affected release first name into the tag list.
2. Set this bug status back to "confirmed".

Thank you.

Changed in vino (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Incomplete
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