Session starting with a zeitgeist-datahub zombie process

[Hernando Torque]

Binary package hint: zeitgeist

To reproduce, either
a.) Just start a desktop session
b.) Kill the zeitgeist-daemon and manually run zeitgeist-datahub

In both cases 'ps' reveals a zombie process:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/583545/

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: zeitgeist-core 0.7-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-7.36-generic 2.6.38
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-7-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Mar 21 23:07:05 2011
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: zeitgeist
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2010-12-08 (103 days ago)

[Markus Korn (thekorn)]

I can reproduce this issue in my natty installation.
@Michal do you have an idea what's going on, maybe sth. wrong in the datahub?

[Markus Korn (thekorn)]

Ok, now I know what's going on here http://paste.ubuntu.com/586129/
We just have to manage the case in the daemon that the datahub exists immediately on daemon startup, because an already running datahub was found. We can fix this in a few steps, first ist that the datahub should return an exit code !=0 if it fails to start because of this case.

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

Instead of doing a complex Popen dance to get this right we might as well use glib's g_spawn_async()..?

[Markus Korn (thekorn)]

------------------------------------------------------------
revno: 1714
fixes bug(s): https://launchpad.net/bugs/739780
committer: Markus Korn <email address hidden>
branch nick: trunk
timestamp: Thu 2011-04-14 09:29:21 +0200
message:
  Use glib.spawn_async() to launch the datahub instead of subprocess.Popen to
  avoid zombie processes (LP: #739780)
------------------------------------------------------------

[Jan Schürmann (visionfactory.net)]

on my installation of 11.04 there are three processes in Zombie state...on every startup.

zeitgeist-datah
uname
desktopcouch-service

[kenburgi (kwburgi)]

I just noticed this tonight. My fresh install of 11.04 always has one process in a zombie state. I can't seem to kill/end it.

zeitgeist-datah

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package zeitgeist - 0.8.0-1

---------------
zeitgeist (0.8.0-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release. Some of the changes are:
   - Fixed secondary sorting by timestamp for most ResultTypes (LP: #772041).
   - Enabled filtering by availability in FindEvents.
   - Added event origin and current_uri properties (LP: #425258, ...) with
     corresponding ResultTypes and MoveEvent handling (LP: #602211).
   - Fixed inconsistencies caused by the internal cache not being updated when
     events were deleted (LP: #598666).
   - Added a Storage Monitor extension which tracks network connectivity and
     removable devices (LP: #489194).
   - Fixed datahub launching to avoid zombie processes (LP: #739780).
   - Replaced the Blacklist extension giving it a more capable API
     (LP: #612344).
   - Simplified log output (LP: #744818, ...).
   - Fixed bug in the connection (to Zeitgeist) recovery code (LP: #771970).
  * debian/control:
   - Bump Standards-Version to 3.9.2.
 -- Ubuntu Archive Auto-Sync <email address hidden> Mon, 09 May 2011 11:56:03 +0000

[mr.goose (editor-garfnet)]

That's great. Thanks for fixing. When is the fixed package likely to turn up in the repositories?

Best wishes, G

[Manish Sinha (मनीष सिन्हा) (manishsinha)]

This is already available in oneiric.
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/oneiric/+source/zeitgeist

Should appear in zeitgeist PPA soon

[mr.goose (editor-garfnet)]

Do I actually need it at all? As I understand it, all it does is log what I'm doing. TBH, I'd rather it didn't - not that I'm doing anything I shouldn't! lol. I just hate the feeling of being spied upon by my own computer!

It seems a rather pointless waste of resources in my case. And I'm fed up with hunting and killing the resultant zombies. What would happen if I sudo apt-get removed it? Would that break my system?

Best wishes, G

[apinunt (apinunt)]

As zeitgeist appears in synaptic as installed, but NOT a 'supported package', I'm wondering WHY and HOW did it get installed? And is it really necessary as it doesn't appear to benefit me in any way at all related to how I use my system?

[Manish Sinha (मनीष सिन्हा) (manishsinha)]

You install the package which is a wrapper package for
zeitgeist-core(engine) and zeitgeist-datahub. This is how it is getting
installed

Datahub is necessary as it is a passive logger. Without it zeitgeist's
usefulness would be decrease a lot

[Ivan Kuznetsov (ivan-y-kuznetsov)]

There's still version 0.7.1-1 in Ubuntu 11.04 repos - any news on when 0.8.0-1 will make it to the release?

[Manish Sinha (मनीष सिन्हा) (manishsinha)]

I don't think 0.8.0 will make it into Natty as there are many major changes between the releases. This is as far as I know. I need to cross check with people who issue SRU.

In any case you can use our PPA

[Christopher K. (christopher-christosoft)]

If I understand it correctly, having one zombie process running is not much to worry about. It does not consume memory anymore. It only uses one entry in the process table. So if you have 1 zombie, you only have one process ID less available to start new processes. Unless you're running thousands of processes and can't start new ones because no PID is left, having one zombie is no problem at all. Of course these things should be fixed, because if all programs leave zombies behind this might become a problem.

Have a heart for that poor zombie process and just wait for oneiric to hunt it to death ;-)

(Please correct me if I am wrong.)

[Rachel Greenham (rachel-strangenoises)]

you don't get it by choosing to install zeitgeist, it comes in as a dependency of unity-place-files and unity-place-applications, which are recommended dependencies of unity. Remove zeitgeist and you lose the unity place things too.

meh, no loss; launcher's too full on this netbook anyway, and always spotting that zombie was getting distracting...

Oh btw, getting this issue on x64 desktop too. reports i've seen so far seemed to all be for x86 so thought i'd mention...

[Rachel Greenham (rachel-strangenoises)]

(however doing that mostly kills the dash, alt-f2 et al, which i had been
counting on using more to compensate for losing the applications place.
Seems they're the same thing. Ah well.)

pls to release fix for natty; zombies are unsightly, unseemly, untidy and
just plain unhygienic. :-)

[portu2511 (portu2511)]

Saame issue on my netbook Ubuntu 11.04 kernel 2.6.38.11 and on my x86_64

[Charles Curley (charlescurley)]

I'm seeing the same thing:

charles@yendi:~$ ps aux | grep -i z
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
charles 3379 0.1 0.0 153972 3728 ? Sl 18:37 0:00 /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --daemonize --login
charles 3508 0.5 0.2 227244 10556 ? Sl 18:37 0:00 zeitgeist-datahub
charles 3516 0.4 0.4 115636 18076 ? Sl 18:37 0:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/zeitgeist-daemon
charles 3579 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Z 18:37 0:00 [zeitgeist-datah] <defunct>
charles 3758 0.0 0.0 9140 1056 pts/0 S+ 18:38 0:00 grep --color=auto -i z
charles@yendi:~$ uname -a
Linux yendi 2.6.38-11-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 29 19:02:55 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
charles@yendi:~$

I don't know how long this has been going on. I just noticed it as my GUI crashed and I had to reboot. Which may or may not be related to this issue.

This is on a Lenovo T61, 4 GB of RAM:

charles@yendi:~$ free
             total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3890 1394 2496 0 99 548
-/+ buffers/cache: 747 3143
Swap: 2379 0 2379
Total: 6270 1394 4876
charles@yendi:~$

I'm glad you have it fixed for OO. That's nice. However OO is beta. If it isn't in the released code, it isn't fixed except for beta testers. Now, can we have it for NN?

Thank you

[Graeme Glass (graemeglass)]

Will this fix get back ported to Natty; or will it only be available in the PPA?

[Siegfried Gevatter (rainct)]

You'd have to ask the Ubuntu Desktop team, but as far as I know there are no plans for backporting it.

This bug should be pretty harmless.

[Stanley Poh (ptsg)]

I'm having this zombie thingy also. But not always. Whenever this happen, most of the time IT TOOK MOST OF MY CPU process time. Yes it is harmless, but thing slowed down without any warning as it can happen any time. I can't kill it, even logging out and back in doesn't help. A re-boot is needed for it to go away.

Do I need this zeitgeist in Gnome Classic? If not how do I get rid of it?

[Stanley Poh (ptsg)]

Oh I forgot to mention. I am using Natty 11.04.

[Oliver Joos (oliver-joos)]

I confirm, this bug still exists in Natty 11.04.

It has been reported for and has a tag "natty". Please consider to backport the fix to Natty and Lucid LTS. Many users are affected and these releases are still promised to be supported, aren't they?