High CPU usage of wxWidget apps caused by dbusmenu

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement]

Binary package hint: pgadmin3

When wxWidget application is launched (e.g pgadmin3) the desktop becomes really slow and X starts consuming a lot of CPU. The UI of pgadmin3 is like flickering very fast.

Everything returns to normal when pgadmin3 is closed.

There are minimal python and cpp examples attached to this report in minimal.tar.gz

This was introduced by the fix for bug 662077

TEST CASE:
1. Start a Unity session
2. Launch pgadmin3
3. Connect to a server
4. Launch the Query Tool

Result:
The desktop becomes very slow, X consuming most of the CPU and the UI of pgadmin3 is like flickering very fast.

WORKAROUND:
disable dbusmenu with:
$ UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= pgadmin3

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: pgadmin3 1.12.2-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-4.31-generic 2.6.38-rc5
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-4-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Feb 21 00:14:53 2011
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: pgadmin3

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

I'm unable to reproduce the problem this morning after an upgrade and restart of the system. I set the status to incomplete and will let it expire if it's not an issue anymore.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

confirmed when the query tool is launched, X jumps to very CPU usage and the UI becomes unusable. Increasing priority to medium.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

It's not reproducible with a Classic Desktop session with or without compiz running.
I'm adding a task for Unity since it is the only environment where this issue exists.

[Franck (alci)]

This is really a showstopper for anyone using postgresql databases on a regular basis as it makes pgadmin totally unusable with unity.

[Ricardo Pedroso (rmdpedroso)]

I think that this may be related to wxWidgets.
I saw this behaviour, for eg, with pyshell from wxPython.

And to be more specific, I think that the problem is with wxListCtrl
Not sure, but I guess that all wx apps that use ListCtrl will have this issue.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Ricardo, could you provide a simple test to reproduce this issue with wxWidgets ?

[Ricardo Pedroso (rmdpedroso)]

Attached.

I made 2 simple samples,
one in c++ (minimal.cpp) to be used with wxWidgets
the other with python (minimal.py) to be used with wxPython

Both have some directives to be change:
USE_MENUS 1 // 1 - with menus 0 - without menus
USE_LISTCTRL 1 // 1 - with a listctrl 0 - with a textctrl

The above combination, both 1's, is when we can reproduce the problem.
The tests were done with everything from the ubuntu repos.

Then I compiled wxWidgets from wxWidgets.org (wxGTK-2.8.11.tar.gz),
compiled the minimal.cpp attached against this build and I could not reproduce the problem.

My wxWidgets build was done simply with configure --enable-unicode

[Ricardo Pedroso (rmdpedroso)]

I found that the culprit is this patch:
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/64734089/wxwidgets2.8_2.8.11.0-0ubuntu6_2.8.11.0-0ubuntu7.diff.gz

Probably this bug should go to wxwidgets2.8 and/or appmenu-gtk

When run:
UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 ./minimal

There is no CPU usage problem with the problematics USE_MENUS 1 and USE_LISTCTRL 1

references:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wxwidgets2.8/+bug/662077
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/appmenu-gtk/+bug/660314
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wxwidgets2.8/2.8.11.0-0ubuntu7

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thanks for tracking this down and for the sample code.
I can reproduce the problem with your examples and confirm the disabling appmenu with UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 works around the problem.

I'm affecting to the right package.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

I wanted to update this bug with some of the things that Conor found, and mentioned to me on IRC, just incase someone else had some ideas here. Some things that he's discovered:

 - This happens on Maverick as well
 - If you start the application without the menus alive (GNOME 2, remove the applet) and then start the menus the problem does not occur
 - If you start the app, remove the menus, then add them back, it doesn't appear after the menus are added back.

This leads us to believe that this is something in WxWidgets that is looking for the menubar and not finding as we've hidden it with appmenu. Still investigating, but hoping that someone who knows WxWidgets better might be able to help.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

Marking the Unity task as Invalid as Unity itself isn't causing this. It's the appmenu-gtk module.

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

Hey folks, I came up with this patch which seems to resolve the issue here, and breaks the infinite loop caused by appmenu.patch.
Can you verify that it's not causing anything else, talk a little to upstream to see if they agree etc?

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

If you don't want to compile wxwidgets yourself to test, there is now a compiled version in ppa:diwic/ppa

[Doug McMahon (mc3man)]

Got duped here on audacity which is only wx app here
The patch does work well w/audacity using the appmenu, tested in unity login only

[Abhishek Udupa (abhishek-udupa)]

Confirm that fix works on guayadeque as well, which is a duplicate of this bug. Tested on Ubuntu Classic login, but with app-menu enabled via compiz-config. Thanks for the patch!

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

@bdrung, here's the debdiff you were asking for.

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

@bdrung, modified debdiff with dep-3 header according to your wishes

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package wxwidgets2.8 - 2.8.11.0-0ubuntu8

---------------
wxwidgets2.8 (2.8.11.0-0ubuntu8) natty; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/appmenu2.patch: Fix high CPU usage with
    appmenu-gtk, which was caused by appmenu.path (LP: #722375)
 -- David Henningsson <email address hidden> Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:30:16 +0200

[David Henningsson (diwic)]

When trying to upstream this bug, I was made aware that a very similar fix was already upstream: http://svn.wxwidgets.org/viewvc/wx/wxWidgets/branches/WX_2_8_BRANCH/src/gtk/frame.cpp?r1=66344&r2=67149

[harpreet bhatia (bluepicaso)]

still probelm in 12.04, with filezilla