LibreOffice Calc causes high CPU usage in Xorg when displaying "marching ants"

[Nathan Wittstock]

To reproduce (on my system):

1. Run LibreOffice calc (I had imported a CSV with 3 columns and about 300 rows)
2. Select any cell
3. Press Ctrl+C to copy
4. "marching ants" selection appears

At this point, Xorg is now using 100% CPU on one of my processors. Clearing the selection (by typing in another cell) clears the "marching ants" selection, at which time CPU usage returns to normal.

This survives a restart of the application, or a reboot. Same issue will occur.

Running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64-bit on a Lenovo ThinkPad T61, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro 140M running the proprietary nvidia driver. All drivers, software, BIOS, etc. are at latest versions.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: libreoffice-calc 1:3.5.3-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.37-generic 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat May 19 00:13:51 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Nathan Wittstock, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. Please answer the following questions:
+ Does toggling the following make a difference:
Tools -> Options -> View -> checkbox Use hardware acceleration
Tools -> Options -> View -> checkbox Use Anti-Aliasing
+ How about switching to the nouveau drivers?

[Nathan Wittstock (milkandtang)]

Disabling Hardware Acceleration and Anti-Alaising see a notable decrease in CPU usage; it still spikes but doesn't bring my system to a crawl.

Notably: This may be tied to the NVIDIA PowerMizer settings. So when you're in "Adaptive" mode, it's supposed to spool up the clock speed on the card when the power is needed. It looks to me like the "marching ants" selection is taxing on the GPU, but PowerMizer often fails to increase the card's clock speed when it's taxed by LibreOffice. What I'm finding is:

+ If do something else that taxes the GPU, like initiate a transparent window somewhere, PowerMizer increases the clock speed, and LibreOffice begins performing better
+ If I set PowerMizer to "Maximum Performance" rather than adaptive, the problem goes away.
(however, Xorg still uses about 33% CPU whenever the marching ants are present)

I have not had a chance to try the nouveau drivers yet.

Do you think it's worth a continued investigation, or does this sound like an NVIDIA bug?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for libreoffice (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Andrew (andre-lilleaas)]

I have kind of the same problem.

When i start up libreoffice writer/calc etc. it hangs, it doesn't get that far that it shows any text, just gray.
And thye cpu and memory usage goes from ca. 10percent to 99-100 percent for both, then everything goes really slow.

Even if i try to open new document, it hangs... when i finally get to kill the process, resource usage goes down to normal again.

This is on my home computer (new install 12.04), and my work computer(upgrade 12.04 from 11.10).

AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor × 4
GeForce 9400 GT/PCIe/SSE2
(8GiB RAM)

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Andrew, could you please file a new report by executing the following in a terminal:
ubuntu-bug libreoffice-writer

For more on this, please see the Ubuntu Bug Control and Ubuntu Bug Squad article:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue

and Ubuntu Community article:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_Reporting_Etiquette

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it. Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful Bug Reporting Links:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#A3._Make_sure_the_bug_hasn.27t_already_been_reported
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Adding_Apport_Debug_Information_to_an_Existing_Launchpad_Bug
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Adding_Additional_Attachments_to_an_Existing_Launchpad_Bug

[Hlobil Vaclav (vaclav-hlobil)]

Same problem here. (Should I open new bug report too? OMG)

I think this could be caused by rendering of that selection frame with moving dashed lines.

I have nVidia too.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Hlobil Vaclav, if you have a bug in Ubuntu, could you please file a new report by executing the following in a terminal:
ubuntu-bug xorg

For more on this, please see the Ubuntu X.Org team (maintainers of xorg-server), Ubuntu Bug Control team, and Ubuntu Bug Squad team article:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue

and Ubuntu Community article:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_reporting_etiquette

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

Please note, not filing a new report may delay your problem being addressed as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your understanding.

[Yulianto (sehari24jam)]

Similar problem. When marching-ants show up, libre-office bottom bar "flashing" as well.
CPU usage rising, disk-I/O (writing) rising as well, at steady. CPU at 50% per core, disk-I/O at 200kB/s.

Then, when I go to any other window (ie: gedit, chrome), do some selection, and press Ctrl-C, then "everything goes back normal".

[kai (kai-m)]

I can confirm Yulianto´s comment that disk-I/O is rising very high as well.

My system has almost the same properties that Nathan´s has. I will provide more Informations about my system if needed.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Yulianto / kai, if you have a bug in Ubuntu, the Ubuntu X.Org team, Ubuntu Bug Control, and Ubuntu Bug Squad would like you to please file a new report by executing the following in a terminal:
ubuntu-bug xorg

For more on this, please see the Ubuntu X.Org Team, Ubuntu Bug Control, and Ubuntu Bug Squad article:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/BestPractices#X.2BAC8-Reporting.Focus_on_One_Issue

and Ubuntu Community article:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_reporting_etiquette

When opening up the new report, please feel free to subscribe me to it.

Please note, not filing a new report may delay your problem being addressed as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your understanding.

[Grizzly (sven-witterstein)]

It's there (again?) in LibreOffice 5.2.0.4 (from ppa as well as document foundation build).

I am still on 14.04 because the update to 16.04 utterly failed, but running xenial's kernel and NVIDIA proprietary driver nvidia-352.

see here:
- https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2333447
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1308700

The Title should not even be marching ants - it's generally not usable, possibly in the config NVIDIA proprietary driver and gnome, cinnamon or unity.

I am now checking my bunch ov VMed distros for a usable libreOffice...