ubuntuone syncdaemon starts every second and causes high CPU load

[Vratislav Podzimek]

When connected to the server Ubuntu One client starts syncdaemon every second and causes 50% CPU load. This doesn't happen in Karmic (Ubuntu 9.10)

ProblemType: Bug
.home.koki..cache.ubuntuone.log.syncdaemon.exceptions.log:

Architecture: i386
CrashDB: ubuntuone
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: ubuntuone-client 0.96.0+r231-0ubuntu1~ppa1~jaunty
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntuone-client
ThirdParty: True
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-15-generic i686
UnreportableReason: This is not a genuine Ubuntu package

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

I want to explain my words. Sure syncdaemon doesn't "start" every second I meant it is marked as "running" in System Monitor every second. And then it causes 50% CPU load even though my files are already synced. I hope it is not the right behaviour. :-)

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

The same is happening when I am not connected to the Internet and I somehow modify my files in Ubuntu One folder.

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

Hi Vratislav,

My apologies for the high CPU load you're seeing. My guess is some out of control logging is going on base don the fact that your oauth log is 5 MiB. The good news is that we just released a new client update that should fix this on 9.04. Please run an update, restart the client and let me know if this fixes the problem for you.

Thank you,

Joshua

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

Situation is the same even I ran an update. :(

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

Hi Vratislav, I'm sorry to hear that. Can you please attach ~/.cache/ubuntuone/log/syncdaemon.log to this bug report? Note that attaching syncdaemon.log will show filenames you are attempting to sync with Ubuntu One. If you do not want this to be public, please mark the bug as private and this bug report will only be available to you and the Ubuntu One team. Thank you, Joshua

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

I don't mind people will be able to see what I have in my Ubuntu One folder. I don't have anything private or secret there. :-) So I attached some files to this comment. The first is syncdaemon.log and the others are files which appear in the log folder every second. The file syncdaemon-exceptions.log is also modified every second. I wanted to stop the syncdaemon by running u1sdtool --quit before attaching these files here but nothing happened and I had to abort the command with CTRL+C.
I hope that these files will be helpful and will help to fix this issue.

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

I didn't know how to attach more files to one comment. :-[

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

Hi Vratislav, It appears you're on a slightly older version. You can update to the latest version but know that you will likely face another known issue at this time (bug 451670). But if you update, we can see if the other errors go away. Can you try the update, quit the Ubuntu One client, and then try to start it from a terminal session? ubuntuone-client-applet

Any information from performing the steps above will be much appreciated!

Joshua

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

When I run apt-get update and then apt-get upgrade no new version of ubuntuone is found (only package tzdata was upgraded). I read comments to the bug 451670 and I realised that there is new version. How can I get the r261 version? Good news is that I am not facing the bug 451670. :-)

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

I have got some news:
ubuntuone-syncdaemon doesn't sync my files in Ubuntu One folder. But when I installed the package u1sync and then ran u1sync --action=sync ~/Ubuntu\ One my files got synced. When I make any change in some of my files synchronization doesn't run automatically just if I run u1sync --action=sync ~/Ubuntu\ One. Only the 50% CPU load by ubuntu-syncdaemon is automatic. :-(
Could reinstall of the package ubuntuone-client be helpful?

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

I updated to version r261 and my problem is still the same nothing changed. I also tried reinstall but it didn't help me. :( It is really curious because I have the same version of ubuntuone on my desktop computer with Ubuntu 9.04 and no problem there. But on laptop in 9.04 it's unusable because of the high CPU load. In 9.10 it is working very well.

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

Hi Vratislav,

If you don't mind, can you try removing Ubuntu One and reinstalling? Try with these steps:

1. Quit Ubuntu One Client
2. sudo rm -rf ~/.share/local/ubuntuone
3. rm -rf ~/.cache/ubuntuone
4. rm -rf ~/Ubuntu\ One
5. sudo apt-get purge ubuntuone*
6. sudo apt-get install ubuntuone*

Thank you,

Joshua

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

No problem except one detail - won't `rm -rf ~/Ubuntu\ One` remove my files also on the server? Probably no considering the fact my Ubuntu One doesn't sync data with server. But I will rather backup my files from the server for the case of some problem.

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

Hi Vratislav, You are correct. I should have said to rename the ~/Ubuntu\ One directory instead of removing it. My apologies. If you rename, do the install, and then copy the files from the old ~/Ubuntu One directory, that should work or at least eliminate some possibilities of an old install that went wrong. Thank you, Joshua

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

Well, I completely reinstalled ubuntuone (by purge and install) and my "progress" is that now I can't run ubuntuone-client-applet. When I run it I only get some information about error. :( A attached these information to this comment.

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

And, of course, ubuntuone-syncdaemon still causes 50% CPU load.

[Ivan Petrovic (ivanpetrovic)]

Cycle is: 20 sec of high CPU, then 20 sec of uploading data to network, 20 sec of high CPU.... over and over

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

Hi Vratislav, I think the problems you were having on the 20th were related to server side issues. Can you please let me know if you're still having problems or not? If you are, any info you can provide is much appreciated! Joshua

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

Unfortunately I'm still having the same problems. ubuntuone-syncdaemon is not syncing my data only causes high CPU load due to problems (mainly logging them to .log files). As usual I'll attach these files for further information. I can't understand them very well but from my point of view all problems start with some hashing problem. Am I wrong?

[Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover)]

Hi Vratislav,

OK, Now I'm seeing some errors that a developer can dive deeper into. I'm going to assign this bug to one of our developers to help determine the root cause of the problem. Thank you for your patience and help in troubleshooting this issue!

Joshua

[Svilen Vassilev (tarakanbg)]

I'm experiencing the same problem on 9.10, fully updated. Ubuntu one syncdaemon constantly consumes between 80-90% CPU, even hours after all files are updated. I supposed that might be related to beta issues, but now after 9.10 is freezed for release and the issue's still here, I'm posting to confirm the bug. Attached to this post is the output of ~/.cache/ubuntuone/log/syncdaemon.log file. I'll be around to provide any further info needed to triage and resolve the bug.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Not a lot of posters here yet, so I'll add my experiences. I started doing backups to ubuntuone, and since then, although it no longer seems to be syncing, it is gobbling 80-90% of CPU all the time. Not sure if that's related to the backup (which runs weekly), or would be present even if I hadn't added a lot of content. At any rate, will have to uninstall it soon if no fix is forthcoming, since it's overheating my computer...

[Svilen Vassilev (tarakanbg)]

A bit more info in addition to my previous post: using the disconnect option does not resolve the problem: the CPU load persist and the process remains active. Shutting down the client with the quit option though successfully terminates the process and frees the CPU resource.

[John Beisley (greatred)]

I'll add my experience to this as well:

I had my .viminfo file (and other files) stored under the UbuntuOne directory (wasn't running Vim at the time), but experiencing 100% CPU usage by ubuntuone-syncd on one core. The log contained lots of entries like:

8db-4862-94b5-f747f1d3ded3 [root:8eef1216-51b4-41cd-9c20-235d8edfc494] ''Ubuntu One/.viminfo'' | Called calculate_hash (In: T:NONE:F)
2009-11-02 08:26:38,122 - ubuntuone.SyncDaemon.sync - INFO - T:NONE:F 9af352cb-88db-4862-94b5-f747f1d3ded3 [root:8eef1216-51b4-41cd-9c20-235d8edfc494] ''Ubuntu One/.viminfo'' | Called calculate_hash (In: T:NONE:F)
2009-11-02 08:26:38,123 - ubuntuone.SyncDaemon.sync - INFO - T:NONE:F 9af352cb-88db-4862-94b5-f747f1d3ded3 [root:8eef1216-51b4-41cd-9c20-235d8edfc494] ''Ubuntu One/.viminfo'' | Called calculate_hash (In: T:NONE:F)
2009-11-02 08:26:38,125 - ubuntuone.SyncDaemon.sync - INFO - T:NONE:F 9af352cb-88db-4862-94b5-f747f1d3ded3 [root:8eef1216-51b4-41cd-9c20-235d8edfc494] ''Ubuntu One/.viminfo'' | Called calculate_hash (In: T:NONE:F)

I killed off the daemon, and after examining the logs, moved my .viminfo back out into my home dir, removing it from the Ubuntu One directory. Reconnecting this time resulting in much more sane behaviour, it seemed to sync up, be happy about things and not use as much CPU in the process.

I've noticed that for some reason my .viminfo was owned by root (weird!), and I thus don't have permissions on it. I can well imagine that this might cause ubuntuone-syncd to thrash on it (although maybe it should act nicer about it).

[Andrew Fister (andrewfister)]

As John Beisley has pointed out, ubuntuone-syncdaemon appears to be thrashing when there is a file that the user does not have (full) permissions for. I'm experiencing the same thing with GnuCash files I'm trying to sync. I've marked the bug I filed as a duplicate of this bug just now:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-client/+bug/475079

Syncing works fine on my system but I'm getting 100% cpu long after syncing is done, and it doesn't stop.

However, I stopped the thrashing by deleting the GnuCash lock file, which was set with restrictive permissions. As soon as I deleted this file, the cpu usage went down to near 0%.

[b5baxter (robert-vanrenewable)]

I can confirm that I stopped the thrashing by deleting a GnuCash file - in this case a *.LNK file.

[foggydude (rogier-stekje)]

i have the same
running kubuntu 9.10 and the deamon consumes a very varying amount of my cpu: mostly around 48%, occasionaly dropping to 15%. Its a small folder (few MB) and i did $ sudo chown -hR r '/home/r/Ubuntu One' to make sure it hasnt todo with files owned by root. do you need/want my logs too or all you ok without?

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

I finally solved problem by moving all files from ~/Ubuntu One folder followed by complete reinstall (by apt-get purge ubuntuone* and then rm -R `find ~/ -name *ubuntuone* -print`) and copying files back. No problem now. :-) I think it should help everybody who is facing this situation.

foggydude: Try the same method.

[/dev/random (todevrandom)]

sorry I was trying to point out that affects 9.10 too... but I didn't succeed
sorry

[/dev/random (todevrandom)]

I had the same problem on 9.10 because of files not completely owned by my user.
I fixed it with chown -R user:user Ubuntu\ One

[Mike Goldberg (gdimike-gmail)]

I had the same problem on my fully up-to-date 9.10 amd64 machine.

I tried /dev/random's solution of chown -R user:user Ubuntu\ One with no success.

 Vratislav Podzimek's method seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks.

I'm sorry that I didn't snag the logfiles before running rm -R `find ~/ -name *ubuntuone* -print`. There were a pile of errors in the log syncdaemon-exception.log, including a Python division by zero error.

Are we sure this bug is invalid?

[René López (elmago79)]

Vratislav Podzimek's method also fixed this problem for me. Pretty anoying bug.

[foggydude (rogier-stekje)]

i found an even more effective solution: www.dropbox.com

[llassetter (lancelassetter)]

tried three different versions of ubunuone client and affiliated software all yielding same results. when logging into gnome ubuntuone-syncdaemon hogs cpu for like 10 minutes.

in gnome menu:

system -> preferences -> startup applications the entry for "Ubuntu One" is:

/bin/sh -c '[ -d "$HOME/Ubuntu One" ] && ubuntuone-launch'

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

You said you tried three different versions of ubuntuone client, but did you try to solve the problem using methods presented here in comments?

[llassetter (lancelassetter)]

Yes, I tried methods presented here in the comments.

[Vratislav Podzimek (vratislav-podzimek)]

So you don't have any files in ~/Ubuntu\ One folder owned by some other user? Sorry for a stupid question again, but the answer is crucial for decision whether your case is a new (different) bug or not because as long as I remember all cases mentioned above were caused by this.

[Ryan (ryansully)]

Vratislav Podzimek's method (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntuone-client/+bug/449760/comments/34) worked for me too. Thank you!