system freeze on every file change in home directory

tongro · 2016-09-29 12:09:07

Hi. I'm running XFCE on Debian Jessie.

Ever since I installed the system I have been getting regular system freezes. It seems to happen every time a file gets created/deleted/moved. About 5 seconds after the file operation, everything freezes for about 5 seconds, when there is no response to mouse or keyboard apart from mouse cursor movement.

I captured the output of "top" during a freeze, which shows XFCE processes hogging the CPU, and posted it to http://imgur.com/a/13FW2 . I thought it might be something to do with regenerating thumbnails in Thunar, but thumbnails are disabled there.

Does anybody have any ideas what could be wrong here? Thanks a lot.

--------------------

Edit on 3 October:
It only appears to be caused by file operations in my home directory.

Last edited by tongro (2016-10-03 19:52:58)

Jerry3904 · 2016-09-29 13:29:46

There is a long bug report on this, near the end of which a deb is posted that you might consider running (read posts below it):

https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12264#c116

There are others on this forum who know much more about this sort of thing than I do, BTW, so you should probably wait a bit to see what else gets posted.

I surprised that we have heard nothing of the kind from our users who are running Xfce 4.14 on a Jessie base.

tongro · 2016-10-03 15:15:38

Thanks a lot.

That bug seems to be a different problem, to do with crashes when renaming files in Thunar. My problem is a predictable short freeze every time a file is created/deleted/moved, whether Thunar is used or not.

Any further help would be welcome.

ToZ · 2016-10-03 18:46:24

Does the same freeze happen when you use a terminal window:

touch test
mv test test2
rm test2

...or with gvfs:

echo test | gvfs-save test
gvfs-rename test test2
gvfs-rm test2

tongro · 2016-10-03 19:51:19

Yes, it happens with all those commands.

However in the course of this testing I found that it seems only writes to my home directory (and subdirs thereof) cause the freezes. (Of course I should have tested that before, duh). I have now changed the thread title to make that clear.

Thanks a lot.

Last edited by tongro (2016-10-03 19:54:37)

ToZ · 2016-10-03 21:01:36

tongro wrote:

Yes, it happens with all those commands.

Then its probably not an issue with the desktop environment.

However in the course of this testing I found that it seems only writes to my home directory (and subdirs thereof) cause the freezes.

Perhaps the drive is damaged. Is your home directory on a separate drive or partition?

tongro · 2016-10-03 21:13:03

Everything is in the one partition. The reason I posted here about the issue is because of all the XFCE processes hogging the CPU (as shown in the screenshot).

Thanks again.

Last edited by tongro (2016-10-03 21:15:16)

ToZ · 2016-10-03 21:17:08

That might be a by-product of the hard drive issue. Try logging out of Xfce and logging in to the virtual console - no desktop environment running - and see if you can replicate the issue.

tongro · 2016-10-03 21:42:38

Thanks.

First, with XFCE running, I switched to a console (Ctrl-Alt-F1), logged in, and ran "touch test1;top" which showed the freeze as expected.

Then, I stopped X with "sudo service lightdm stop" and ran "touch test2;top", which did not show any freeze.

ToZ · 2016-10-03 21:57:07

That is interesting. I would have expected the same result. Can you create a second account on your computer, log in with that account, and see if the problem persists?

tongro · 2016-10-03 22:21:35

I logged into the other (rarely-used) user account on the machine, which also uses XFCE. I created a few files in the home directory, but there was no freeze. I then created a few files in my own home directory (using sudo) and again there was no freeze.

So, it seems the freezes only happen when I write to my home directory while logged in to my own account while X is running.

Thanks.

Last edited by tongro (2016-10-03 22:23:41)

ToZ · 2016-10-04 01:05:47

The question now is, how is the new user profile different from your current one?

I would suggest trying the following:

1. Log out and from a virtual console, clear your sessions cache by deleting all of the files in the ~/.cache/sessions directory.

2. Compare the differences in your autostart and running applications.

tongro · 2016-10-04 19:29:23

I'm afraid I'm a bit lost there. Clearing .cache/sessions is no problem, but what are you saying I should do after that?

Thanks again.

ToZ · 2016-10-04 21:20:13

I was suggesting to compare, on a fresh login, what processes or apps are being started and/or are running - in case one of these processes/apps is some how responsible.

Did the cache clearing help?

tongro · 2016-10-04 22:35:09

OK, so I closed all unused applications, did a "ps -A", logged out, logged into a console and deleted .cache/sessions, logged back into XFCE, did another "ps -A", and the differences are:
The first ps has the following processes:
- agetty
- xfce4-power-man
- gvfsd-metadata
The second ps has the following processes:
- gpg-agent
- kworker/3:2
- gnome-keyring-d
- xfce4-notifyd
- gvfsd-trash

It hasn't made a difference to the problem though.

Thanks.

ToZ · 2016-10-05 01:52:09

Sorry, I meant comparing the running processes between the problem profile and the secondary one that you used. I'm wondering if maybe there is some sort of process or app running in your main profile that is causing the delays.

Since the problem only exists in the one profile, then its specific to that configuration and not the system in general. The difficult part is trying to figure out whats different between those two profiles and determining what is causing it.

tongro · 2016-10-05 03:42:39

OK, thanks. This time I logged out, opened a console and cleared .cache/sessions in both accounts, logged into the main account and did a "ps -A", logged out and into the alternative account and did a "ps -A", and compared the two. The differences are:
The alternative account has the following processes:
- kworker/3:2
- pulseaudio
The main account has the following processes:
- kworker/u16:0
- panel21-battery
- gvfsd-trash

The entries in the "Application Autostart" and "Session" tabs in the Settings -> Session and Startup GUI are identical for both accounts.

Thanks.

ToZ · 2016-10-05 13:11:15

Can you run the following command in each profile (good and bad) and post back the results? You may need to install the strace package:

strace touch testfile

Lets see if strace is able to identify the cause of the hang.

tongro · 2016-10-05 13:32:03

Here's the output for the main account:

execve("/usr/bin/touch", ["touch", "testfile"], [/* 38 vars */]) = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x2041000
access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
mmap(NULL, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fc9df938000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=114322, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 114322, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7fc9df91c000
close(3)                                = 0
access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0P\34\2\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1738176, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 3844640, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x7fc9df36f000
mprotect(0x7fc9df510000, 2097152, PROT_NONE) = 0
mmap(0x7fc9df710000, 24576, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x1a1000) = 0x7fc9df710000
mmap(0x7fc9df716000, 14880, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fc9df716000
close(3)                                = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fc9df91b000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fc9df91a000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7fc9df919000
arch_prctl(ARCH_SET_FS, 0x7fc9df91a700) = 0
mprotect(0x7fc9df710000, 16384, PROT_READ) = 0
mprotect(0x60d000, 4096, PROT_READ)     = 0
mprotect(0x7fc9df93a000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0
munmap(0x7fc9df91c000, 114322)          = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x2041000
brk(0x2062000)                          = 0x2062000
open("/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1607632, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 1607632, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7fc9df790000
close(3)                                = 0
open("testfile", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_NOCTTY|O_NONBLOCK, 0666) = 3
dup2(3, 0)                              = 0
close(3)                                = 0
utimensat(0, NULL, NULL, 0)             = 0
close(0)                                = 0
close(1)                                = 0
close(2)                                = 0
exit_group(0)                           = ?
+++ exited with 0 +++

Output for the alternative account:

execve("/usr/bin/touch", ["touch", "testfile"], [/* 37 vars */]) = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x132e000
access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
mmap(NULL, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f8e6a0f4000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=114322, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 114322, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7f8e6a0d8000
close(3)                                = 0
access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0P\34\2\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1738176, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 3844640, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x7f8e69b2b000
mprotect(0x7f8e69ccc000, 2097152, PROT_NONE) = 0
mmap(0x7f8e69ecc000, 24576, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x1a1000) = 0x7f8e69ecc000
mmap(0x7f8e69ed2000, 14880, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f8e69ed2000
close(3)                                = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f8e6a0d7000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f8e6a0d6000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f8e6a0d5000
arch_prctl(ARCH_SET_FS, 0x7f8e6a0d6700) = 0
mprotect(0x7f8e69ecc000, 16384, PROT_READ) = 0
mprotect(0x60d000, 4096, PROT_READ)     = 0
mprotect(0x7f8e6a0f6000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0
munmap(0x7f8e6a0d8000, 114322)          = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x132e000
brk(0x134f000)                          = 0x134f000
open("/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=1607632, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 1607632, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7f8e69f4c000
close(3)                                = 0
open("testfile", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_NOCTTY|O_NONBLOCK, 0666) = 3
dup2(3, 0)                              = 0
close(3)                                = 0
utimensat(0, NULL, NULL, 0)             = 0
close(0)                                = 0
close(1)                                = 0
close(2)                                = 0
exit_group(0)                           = ?
+++ exited with 0 +++

Thanks.

ToZ · 2016-10-05 18:45:53

No important difference between the two.

Sorry, but I can't identify the cause of the issue. Not sure what to recommend. Maybe you should just use the other (or create a new) profile for your main account - where the issue doesn't exist.

tongro · 2016-10-05 21:31:32

OK, thanks a lot for all your help, it's very much appreciated. My suspicion is there is something in my XFCE configuration looking out for file changes and then going crazy when one happens. Setting up a new account from scratch would seem to be the way to go.

Cheers.

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#1 2016-09-29 12:09:07

system freeze on every file change in home directory

#2 2016-09-29 13:29:46

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#3 2016-10-03 15:15:38

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#4 2016-10-03 18:46:24

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#5 2016-10-03 19:51:19

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#6 2016-10-03 21:01:36

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#7 2016-10-03 21:13:03

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#8 2016-10-03 21:17:08

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#9 2016-10-03 21:42:38

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#10 2016-10-03 21:57:07

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#11 2016-10-03 22:21:35

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#12 2016-10-04 01:05:47

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#13 2016-10-04 19:29:23

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#14 2016-10-04 21:20:13

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#15 2016-10-04 22:35:09

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#16 2016-10-05 01:52:09

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#17 2016-10-05 03:42:39

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#18 2016-10-05 13:11:15

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#19 2016-10-05 13:32:03

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#20 2016-10-05 18:45:53

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

#21 2016-10-05 21:31:32

Re: system freeze on every file change in home directory

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