Karmic: Thunderbird&Xorg hog CPU

[Don Cristóbal]

Binary package hint: thunderbird

Thunderbird has generally become very slow in Xubuntu Karmic Beta.
* Bringing Thunderbird to the foreground or sending it to the background takes 2-3 seconds. Switching between other applications is slightly delayed when a part of Thunderbird's window is visible.
* Opening a new message takes 4-5 seconds before it reacts to keyboard input
* Even simple message boxes (like the one that asks you if you want to save a message you're closing) take 2-3 seconds to appear.
* Sometimes (but not always), when bringing Thunderbird to the foreground, the message list or the contents of a message will appear, then disappear and load again.
* Sometimes (but not always) typing is slow when not at the end of the paragraph. Characters are displayed with a delay of 1-2 seconds.

Switching between other applications (OpenOffice, Xfce4-terminal, Thunar, Firefox...) is lightning fast, as usual in Xubuntu. In Jaunty or any previous version I ever used, Thunderbird did never have that problem.

Hardware: IBM Laptop Thinkpad T42, ~1.7 GHz, 700something MB RAM (usage during the test <50%), 3GB swap (only a couple of MB used during the test).

CPU load gets very high when switching from/to Thunderbird. The Xorg process (not thunderbird-bin!) uses 80-90% for several seconds. This is not at all the case when using other applications.

Anything I can do to help you find the cause?

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Oct 11 14:38:56 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: mozilla-thunderbird (not installed)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-12.41-generic
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-12-generic i686

[craig (craig-simplesitesplus)]

Yes, it is terribly slow (x86_64 here). I finally decided to download the Thunderbird Beta 4 and just unpacked it in my home directory. Then I copied my .mozilla-thunderbird to .thunderbird. Needless to say, it rocks once again. I also had to download a nightly build of Lightning since I use that too.

[Don Cristóbal (doncristobal)]

What do Craigs findings mean for the final Version of Xubuntu 9.10? The slow version must not end up in there!

[Karsten (karsten-maxi-dsl)]

I seem to have the same issue after upgrading 9.04 => 9.10 (no obvious problems with 9.04). I'm using TB in a mixed environment with XP, sharing the profile in a common vfat partition.
#456032 appears to describe the same thing.

[jooloop (hordurmordur)]

I can confirm the same problem in almost identical setup as the original bug report from Cristoph.
Same symptoms, same hardware, ThinkPad T42.
Thunderbird *very* sluggish after Xubuntu 9.04 -> 9.10 upgrade.

[Aaron C Spike (acspike)]

Could Bug #456032 be a duplicate of this bug?

[Martin Milinovsky (einkauf-milinovsky)]

I can confirm this bug after upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10: when Thunderbird is running, very high CPU-usage (XOrg), Thunderbird is extremely slow (no problems at all with 9.04). Hardware is AMD Athlon 2500+, 2 GB memory, NVIDIA graphics card, 2x 80 GB Samsung SATA-disks, Ubuntu installed on EXT3-filesystem.

[Don Cristóbal (doncristobal)]

This is still present in the Karmic release. What can be done? Is Craigs hint (comment # 2, install a newer version of Thunderbird) a possible solution?
The default mail client in Xubuntu cannot behave like this for good! I'm sorry I cannot debug this, but I'm willing to do tests if this helps. Just tell me what to do!

[Dominik (dominalien)]

I can confirm this. Thunderbird is very slow in Karmic. It can take about a minute to start downloading messages after inputting the password and during that time the CPU is about 60% busy (on Athlon 2500+, at lowest speed of 933 MHz).

When Thunderbird is visible Compiz also slows down considerably (minimising/restoring, switching desktops, etc).

[Francesco Galgani (francesco-galgani)]

I can confirm that Thunderbird is slow in Ubuntu 9.10.
Not only slow, but while reading an email it refreshes the screen and take a second or two to do that.

[Francesco Galgani (francesco-galgani)]

I solved as suggested by Craig (post #2), switching to Thunderbird Beta 4.

[jooloop (hordurmordur)]

I fixed this behaviour by adding the following lines in the Device section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "ATI Radeon"
 Driver "ati"
 Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
 Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
 Option "AccelDFS" "true"
 Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
 Option "EnableDepthMoves" "true"
EndSection

Most likely the AccelMethod and MigrationHeuristic options are the ones that do the trick.
Really I don't have enough knowledge of these options to comment further.

[Don Cristóbal (doncristobal)]

I confirm that jooloop's fix (comment #12) works for me.

If you want to test it, here are the steps I had to take (from Ubuntu 9.10, there is no more xorg.conf file by default*; you have to create it first):
- log in on an old-fashioned terminal (alt-F1, user, password)
- stop X: $ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
- create a xorg.conf file: $ sudo Xorg -configure (it will be saved in your home directory)
- open the new xorg.conf.new file (I did it in the GUI :-)
- look for the graphics device section
- add the MigrationHeuristic and the AccelMethod lines
- copy only this section to an empty file; save/copy it as /etc/X11/xorg.conf
- restart X: $ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

My thunderbird is quick again!

What can we do to have this be fixed for everyone?

*) More information on xorg.conf: go to www.ubuntuforums.org and look for "xorg.conf" and "karmic", you'll find plenty of threads

[Don Cristóbal (doncristobal)]

Wild guess... the problem seems to be in wrong Xorg settings (at least the problem can be fixed by re-introducing a xorg.conf file with specific entries).

[Rob McAuliffe (5-launchpad-net-mcauliffe-id-au)]

Does anyone know 1) if this is going to be fixed; or 2) how we let someone important know this should be fixed...?

I mean, I can (and did, thx heaps jooloop) follow the instructions above, but how many people using Ubuntu can't use the command line, let alone CTRL+ALT+F1...

How many people in the world would we like to be able to use Ubuntu without the requirement for them to know that?

If this is to be an OS for the common (wo)man, then surely this kind of thing should be fixed quickly upon release?

[Martin Milinovsky (einkauf-milinovsky)]

I totaly agree with you, Bob: this is not a fix a "normal" user could apply and therefore this should get fixed in the release. Unfortunately I cannot answer question 1) and 2) ...

[Chris Pappas (pappas-christopher)]

I am experiencing this problem on my home computer: Fresh install of 9.10 Karmic (GNOME), Athlon 2400+, 1GB DDR, Radeon All-In-Wonder 9600xt with Visual Effects turned off ("None").

Thunderbird is very sluggish, user interface is drawn slowly and there are 1-2 second delays before the interface responds when using any buttons or other elements. Network throughput seems to be OK, it's no faster or slower than usual to send or receive messages with attachments etc.

I have another partition on this same computer with Ubuntu 9.04 but no problems with Thunderbird - it performs quickly and there are no delays or UI slowness.

On my work computer: 3.00 GHz Intel C2D, 1GB, Intel integrated graphics (945 series I think?) with Visual Effects turned off ("None"), Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade from 9.04, I haven't noticed any problems although this is a much faster machine in general.

I will attempt the Xorg.conf thing and post my results. Are there any log files etc. that I could post and would be helpful for diagnosing and fixing this problem?

[Chris Pappas (pappas-christopher)]

After implementing Christoph's and jooloop's solution, Thunderbird's responsiveness has improved significantly. This seems to have done the trick for me.

I agree with Rob and Martin about this being over the heads of many common users. I'm willing to provide any necessary information to help resolve this issue for others.

[Chris Pappas (pappas-christopher)]

I just noticed that after making this change, Firefox has increased responsiveness now as well. I was noticing some brutal lags when scrolling websites (in particular Slashdot!) and that seems to have improved (it's not perfect but now it's usable).

Those are some very useful settings it would seem! Perhaps they should be implemented for most users as well?

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

so it seems like some bug in the radeon EXA code, intel works fine here.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automatic notification.]

Hi Christoph,

This bug was reported against an earlier version of Ubuntu, can you
test if it still occurs on Lucid?

Please note we also provide technical support for older versions of
Ubuntu, but not in the bug tracker. Instead, to raise the issue through
normal support channels, please see:

    http://www.ubuntu.com/support

If you are the original reporter and can still reproduce the issue on
Lucid, please run the following command to refresh the report:

  apport-collect 448678

If you are not the original reporter, please file a new bug report, so
we can work with you as the original reporter instead (you can reference
bug 448678 in your report if you think it may be related):

  ubuntu-bug xorg

If by chance you can no longer reproduce the issue on Lucid or if you
feel it is no longer relevant, please mark the bug report 'Fix Released'
or 'Invalid' as appropriate, at the following URL:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/448678

[Don Cristóbal (doncristobal)]

Bryce: It seems the bug does not occur in Lucid any more, so I mark it "Fix released".

However, I've not tested it thouroughly because Thunar (Xubuntu file manager) is thoroughly broken in Lucid (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunar/+bug/520118 and http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6230) - I'll stay with Karmic for the moment.