lxde-openbox desktop / lxdm-binary high cpu usage [SOLVED]

[BillWho]

Hi all,

I noticed an unusually high amount of cpu usage by lxdm-binary today on three computers. Everything was normal yesterday so I have no clue what could have caused this.

The last time genlop shows activity for lxde-base/lxdm-0.4.1-r4 is Tue Mar 13 15:22:50 2012 and Thu Aug 4 09:03:42 2011 for lxde-base/lxde-meta

I've tried revdep-rebuild and re-emerging lxde-base/lxdm-0.4.1-r4 to no avail. I modified inittab to start in runlevel 3 and disabled respawn:/usr/sbin/lxdm >& /dev/null to check the difference in cpu usage.

I've attached two screen shots that show the usage with and without lxdm not knowing what else to provide.

high cpu usage

normal cpu usage

I was just wondering if anyone else has encountered this or is aware of any current anomalies. I've checked bugzilla, but nothing is listed for lxdm

Thanks for your review - any wild off-the-wall guesses would be appreciated

[djhyland]

Yeah, I'm having the same problem too, and it started sometime last night for me as well. I've tried masking lxde-base/lxdm-0.4.1-r4 and emerging an earlier version, but thus far I haven't gotten the emerge to finish. I'll keep trying and post my results.

[BillWho]

djhyland,

Thanks for your reply. Now I know I'm not the only one that stumbled upon this.

I updated the three computes last evening, so I'm pretty sure it was a package emerged on April 12.

The only commonality I found so far is x11-libs/gtk+-3.4.0. It was emerged last evening and it's in lxde-base/lxdm-0.4.1-r4 dependency graph.

Later this evening, I'm going to mask x11-libs/gtk+-3.4.0 and attempt to downgrade to x11-libs/gtk+-3.2.4-r1 and see what happens.

Here goes nothing

[djhyland]

Let me know how it goes. Given your idea, I recompiled lxdm with the -gtk3 use tag, but it's still sucking up the CPU. I suppose I'll keep experimenting, and let you know if I find a solution.

[BillWho]

djhyland,

Thanks for the update

As far as the avenue I pursued of downgrading to x11-libs/gtk+-3.2.4-r1 goes, it was a dead-end.

I then got aggressive and recompiled the entire dependency graph for lxde-base/lxdm-0.4.1-r4 and ended up right back where I started - no change.

I guess it's going to take a little more digging than I originally thought to uncover the culprit

In the interim, I'm just dropping to runlevel 3 and using startx.

If you should try or discover anything, Id be interested in knowing. Naturally, I'll do the same

[Freeky]

I have similar problem.

I try older version of lxdm but I can't install them. (It is another story)

After

[djhyland]

Still no luck on my end with fixing lxdm, but it looks like other distros are having this problem as well:

Ubuntu https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lxdm/+bug/922363
OpenSuse https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=741454
Red Hat https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=767861

Looking through Red Hat's bugzilla report, I found something about a new version of glib interfering with lxdm. I seem to recall updating glib right before the cpu usage problem, so that might be it. I'll give downgrading glib a try.

Otherwise, I suppose that lxdm is only one of my recent attempts to replace gdm after Gnome 3 changed it to suck. I've been playing around with slim, so switching to that could be my surest solution. But I'll let you know how the glib downgrade works...

EDIT: it looks like my current dev-libs/glib (2.32.0), which was indeed emerged on the 12th, is now hardmasked. Perhaps our problem has something to do with it? There's a new version of glib to emerge (2.32.1), so I'll try that...

[BillWho]

djhyland,

Thanks again for the update and bug info.

Freeky,

[djhyland]

No luck on the updated glib, but there's a whole mess of other updates available. I suppose I can cross my fingers and hope that one of them fixes the problem...

[BillWho]

djhyland,

The emerge just completed with no change to lxdm

I tried killing the process as Freeky alluded to, but my screen kept flickering every couple of seconds.

I also tried a debug compile last evening to get a backtrace, but as a result I couldn't logon

I guess we'll just have to wait it out until a fix come in

[Freeky]

Maybe It's important: After killing lxdm-binary I run

[BillWho]

Freeky,

Thanks for the hint with pcmanfm, but that didn't do anything for me here

This is my lxdm-binary process tree before and after killing it:

[djhyland]

Yeah, my system has finally finished compiling, and lxdm still eats up CPU. No luck here, either. I'll keep an eye open, but slim is working pretty well, so I guess my problem is solved. Still, I'll post if I find anything.

[XavierMiller]

Hello,

Same problem here.

Can you file a bug in http://bugs.gentoo.org so that Gentoo developers can take action (mask some packages, apply patches, ...)?

Thanks in advance!
_________________
Xavier Miller
(FR) Merci de respecter les règles du forum.
http://www.xaviermiller.be

[BillWho]

XavierMiller,

This bug has been reported

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=412025

[XavierMiller]

Thanks, I will watch it
_________________
Xavier Miller
(FR) Merci de respecter les règles du forum.
http://www.xaviermiller.be

[spielc]

Hi,

i thought i'd let you know that i found a fix for the problem. I fetched a patch from Ubuntu, updated the ebuild for lxdm-0.4.1-r4 and now cpu-usage is back at a sane state. I attached everything to the bugreport
_________________
Raise your beers up high...

[BillWho]

spielc,

Thanks a lot for the patch. Just applied it here and all looks good

Also thanks to djhyland, Freeky and XavierMiller

Man, was I on the wrong track with gtk+ and glib
_________________
Good luck

Since installing gentoo, my life has become one long emerge

[XavierMiller]

Hello,

Thanks for the patch, it does the job on all my machines !
_________________
Xavier Miller
(FR) Merci de respecter les règles du forum.
http://www.xaviermiller.be