Cinnamon all of a sudden very slow + high CPU usage

[0mull]

Hi everybody,

yesterday everything was fine, I have LM14 + Cinnamon on my work desktop for just a few days now and was thrilled, everything worked seamlessly and perfect. But now a huge setback - booted this morning and everything is super slow and laggy, cinnamon consumes 70-90% CPU usage. I found not much related to this on the net. I followed this https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/1154 and the fixes suggested in the link don't really help much.

No error messages in looking glass, no defunct processes, as stated, I am running a nearly fresh LM 14 Nadia 64bit. What could be the cause? Where to start looking? Why the hell does it happen overnight??

Any help, ideas, comments whatsoever are greatly appreciated.

best, Georg

[zerozero]

Why the hell does it happen overnight??

hardly the software mutates overnight (when the computer is off), so in order to help you, you need to remember and share with us everything you did (app installed/removed, services enabled/disabled, tweaks, every little think counts) since the moment cinnamon was working great until you shut down and found out latter this issue

[0mull]

Thanks for your reply.

services disabled:
caribou
mintupload
mintwelcome
bluetooth

last software installed:
dropbox - does not cause the problem. Ran fine with it before, and the problem persists if the daemon is off.
virtualbox
spyder - python IDE
mendeley - citation reference manager, is not a daemon and does not run

edit: forgot to add: I have the "weahter" and the "hardware monitor" applets, but the problem persists if both are turned off

last night I played mostly with blender - and thats not even installed.

Of course the software doesn't change overnight. I was more thinking of an update process or something similar that causes something to get stuck. Right now cinnamon peaks at 138% cpu usage. Any other information that could be of use? I don't know where I could look for useful cinnamon logs or error reports besides the looking glass, and there is nothing

Thanks, georg

[eanfrid]

Maybe your GPU is using CPU/software 3D rendering (llvmpipe) instead of GPU hardware rendering. What is the result of "inxi -G" ?

[0mull]

Thanks for the suggestion, here is the output:

Code: Select all

Graphics:  Card: Intel 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
           X.Org: 1.13.0 drivers: vesa,intel (unloaded: fbdev) Resolution: 1680x1050@59.9hz
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x301) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.0


best, Georg

[eanfrid]

Check if you have any /etc/X11/xorg.conf left. You should probably rename (or delete) any xorg.conf. Mesa 9.0 is a brand-new version/branch of Mesa 3D utilities. Perhaps do you have some remaining tweaks that this new version doesn't like since recent (yesterday's) mint updates which couldn't show up bebore Xorg restart. I don't think this is related to the issues you found and read on github.

[remoulder]

I have LM14

No, you have a RC version that may contain bugs and be subject to changes. You should wait until the final release and ensure you have made all updates before requesting help on unfinished versions.

[0mull]

Interesting, now it runs smooth again, and CPU load is down. At this point I have not intstalled any new software, nor did I make any changes I could think of. Sure enough inxi -G output is now:

Code: Select all

Graphics:  Card: Intel 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
           X.Org: 1.13.0 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1680x1050@59.9hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Q45/Q43 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.0


I while back I had a problem with some of my appearence settings being disredarged at random, this happened maybe every 5th boot or so. I remeber that somebody suggested that a race condition could be the cause and that adding a wait in some script could help. It didn't back then, but maybe the suggested cause could apply here too? What else could be the reason that this boot a different GLX renderer was chosen than yesterday?

Check if you have any /etc/X11/xorg.conf left. You should probably rename (or delete) any xorg.conf. Mesa 9.0 is a brand-new version/branch of Mesa 3D utilities. Perhaps do you have some remaining tweaks that this new version doesn't like since recent (yesterday's) mint updates which couldn't show up bebore Xorg restart. I don't think this is related to the issues you found and read on github.

I do, but in "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d" . Is this one read and loaded?

No, you have a RC version that may contain bugs and be subject to changes. You should wait until the final release and ensure you have made all updates before requesting help on unfinished versions.

Don't really understand why you say this. I am not requesting help, I am kindly asking for it. And, don't the developers want people to test the RC to see if and what problems arise? In my view it makes sense to post this issue, as I am running a very general and not customized system, maybe I am not the only person that is seeing this issue.

[zerozero]

0mull,
this looks too much like the issue described in the release notes http://linuxmint.com/rel_nadia.php (the part about intel drivers of course)

[0mull]

0mull,
this looks too much like the issue described in the release notes http://linuxmint.com/rel_nadia.php (the part about intel drivers of course)

totally. My bad for not reading this ealier!

[aelfinn]

this looks too much like the issue described in the release notes http://linuxmint.com/rel_nadia.php (the part about intel drivers of course)

Any solutions to this one yet?

[zerozero]

as you can see in that page they still looking for a reliable solution but there's some workarounds

Intel drivers, poor performance and high CPU usage

On some computers with Intel graphics, the wrong driver is sometimes used. Instead of using the Intel driver and using the GPU to render the desktop, the system reverts to another driver and uses a sofware renderer: llvmpipe.

If you have an Intel graphics card and your CPU usage is anormally high, open a terminal and type the following command:

inxi -G

If the info for "GLX Renderer" shows "Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe" your computer is using software rendering (i.e. it's rendering the desktop with the CPU instead of the GPU).

To fix this issue you need to force the system to use the "intel" driver. There are many ways to achieve this but they're both complicated and risky (forcing the intel driver with an /etc/X11/xorg.conf, removing the xserver-xorg-video-modesetting and/or xserver-xorg-video-fbdev packages...etc). The development team (and upstream Ubuntu since this is an upstream issue) are actively seeking an automated resolution to this problem. In the meantime, if you're impacted by this problem, please seek support from the forums or the IRC.

[aelfinn]

The development team (and upstream Ubuntu since this is an upstream issue) are actively seeking an automated resolution to this problem. In the meantime, if you're impacted by this problem, please seek support from the forums or the IRC.

Yeah, I had seen that. It also says to seek help from the forum, which I was trying to do with the question whether there are any (specific) solutions. Because I haven’t been able to google any so far.