Thunar Stuttering

akovia · 2018-09-22 01:37:44

Within the past week I have noticed that thunar seems to hang frequently. I can be doing nothing and the busy cursor will start. Also while scrolling long lists of files, it will just hang mid scroll and then catches up.

I haven't noticed anything else fishy with my system and see nothing alarming in the logs. I just did an update and rebooted in the hopes of fixing it but no luck. Not sure how to troubleshoot this further and looking for help.

ToZ · 2018-09-22 02:06:31

Tumbler (the thumbnailer) was recently updated. Try reverting back to the previous version to see if the problem disappears.

Also, check which other Xfce packages may have been updated recently.

akovia · 2018-09-23 10:41:56

It may have cleared up on it's own. I wanted to make it fail again before downgrading and it's been doing just fine. The moment it acts up again I'll try your suggestion and report back.

Really appreciate the suggestion.

mint4all · 2018-09-23 15:58:58

akovia wrote:

Within the past week I have noticed that thunar seems to hang frequently. I can be doing nothing and the busy cursor will start. Also while scrolling long lists of files, it will just hang mid scroll and then catches up. ...

Greetings!

Imhe, I've observed this odd behavior whenever "opening", via a graphic file manager like Thunar, a removable drive or network-attached (NAS) or shared drive (Samba, CIFS) that stored a LARGE collection (ie >1000) files and/or folders. Based on suggestions on the ubuntu forums, i've set Thunar's "default" behavior as follows:
The "Show thumbnails 'Local Files Only' " option worked every time for me; the "Never" option won't help me much, and the "Always" option turned out to be my problem (my large archives of .pdf docs) So it may be your's too...

Cheers, M4A

akovia · 2018-09-23 21:35:30

Thanks for the reply.

I have that set to local files only as well. The strange thing is that it still shows thumbs for my NAS drive. I never thought anything of it until you mentioned it though. It was a tad slow again after a big update this morning right after a reboot, but I figured it was just the NAS waking up. Hasn't acted up since.

I think that both of you are right though in thinking it's a thumb issue. I'm in the process of working on my Kodi library and I'm scouring through many TB of pics and vids. I will certainly be back if it starts really stuttering again as it makes it almost unusable. If it is a tumbler issue, maybe they'll fix it before mine acts up again.

MountainDewManiac · 2018-09-23 21:58:59

1) Wouldn't previously generated thumbnails still be used (unless/until the user chooses to delete them)?

2) Several years ago, I tried PCManFM. While I didn't care for it, I did use it long enough to observe that it was the fastest "thumbnail generator" I'd ever seen.

3) Would it be possible to set up some kind of automatic script that would run PCManFM (possibly even in the background, although I have no idea whether or not this is even possible) shortly after the computer is booted, and use it to generate thumbnails for all the "connected" drives?

I'm just trying to think outside the box here. Even if the above worked, it wouldn't help for those drives that you choose to only occasionally (or just once) connect to; but it might be viable for the one(s) you, personally, own and therefore connect to on a regular basis.

I'm probably just displaying my extreme ignorance, I suppose.

Regards,
MDM

akovia · 2018-09-24 00:58:30

MountainDewManiac wrote:

1) Wouldn't previously generated thumbnails still be used (unless/until the user chooses to delete them)?

In my case, this is a new NAS and was never hooked up before locally, so it is indeed creating thumbs on the fly. Not using cached images.

I'm certainly not upset it's doing that, but if what you say is true about not creating thumbs on network drives then mine is broke. I would certainly deduce it shouldn't from the wording of the setting.

carl88990 · 2018-10-19 23:41:57

I have been having this exact same problem for a few weeks, I'm on the newest XFCE on Fedora 28 (4.12). I've used XFCE for years and this specific kind of stuttering has only happened recently.

I think I notice it more on folders with a lot of files, specifically I have a media server mounted with a lot of video files and when I scroll up and down it's started freezing occasionally for a few seconds and then finishing the scroll.

It's also not happening due to generating thumbnails unless there is some kind of bug, as all of the files already have thumbnails.

Edit: According to my update history tumbler got updated on 9/23/18 for me on Fedora, which seems to correspond to the recent start of the freezing. (I've had the same version of Thunar since I installed 6 months ago).

I can cause this to happen at will by just scrolling up and down, and if I do it while monitoring the task manager, what seems to happen is nothing during the freezes (as in I have low CPU usage, thunar/tumbler etc isn't using a ton of CPU) and then when it eventually unfreezes it temporarily has a small spike in CPU usage for Thunar daemon for a split second. Thunar goes to 0% usage during the freeze, then maybe 5% when it unfreezes, and Tumbler is 0-1% the whole time and doesn't seem to be changing due to the freezes at all.

Downgrading tumbler stopped the freezing for me, went from tumbler-0.2.3-1 to tumbler.x86_64 0.2.1-1 and now I don't get any more stuttering no matter how much I scroll. I made a bug report for Tumbler here if anyone who sees this thread has the same problem.

Last edited by carl88990 (2018-10-20 00:45:57)

akovia · 2018-10-20 02:21:36

This is still happening for me as well and just learned to live with it for now.

Thanks for creating a bug report!

carl88990 · 2018-10-22 23:31:34

akovia wrote:

This is still happening for me as well and just learned to live with it for now.
Thanks for creating a bug report!

Are you experiencing this freezing on a local folder with many files or just specifically a network folder? The reason I ask is that I too am having thumbnails generated on my remote drive, however it's because it's mounted system wide as a local mount meaning it technically looks like a local directory to programs/Thunar (as opposed to being accessed from Thunar only through something an smb://ipaddress... address), and ignores the 'Only generate thumbnails for local files' option. I had the freezing on that folder, but no other folders.

I tested a patch from the bug report that disabled a check being run where Tumbler would stat the files before doing anything with them, which seemed to fix the problem as I wasn't getting any stuttering any more, however after going back to 2.3.1 (no patch) I suddenly wasn't getting the stuttering then either, so it seems it might be some kind of sporadic problem in my case as well.

Also have you tried deleting/temporarily moving the thumbnails cached in /home/youruser/.cache/thumbnails/ ? I did this as well which may have had something to do with the stuttering stopping, but even after restoring the thumbnails it wasn't stuttering anymore.

Scratch that it just started freezing again after a few minutes of testing on 2.3.1. But I still haven't had any freezing with the sparse file check removal patch.

Last edited by carl88990 (2018-10-22 23:52:22)

akovia · 2018-10-23 00:25:47

carl88990 wrote:

akovia wrote:
This is still happening for me as well and just learned to live with it for now.
Thanks for creating a bug report!
Are you experiencing this freezing on a local folder with many files or just specifically a network folder?

I never thought of it before, but you're right. It's a network folder mounted locally and not via smb. That explains the thumbs.

I'm following the bug report you made but don't have the time right now to help in the troubleshooting. I really appreciate you staying on top if it!

Cheers.

mint4all · 2018-10-23 16:42:55

Afaict -- unless there's a hidden configuration tweak somewhere -- thunar (actually, its "tumbler" sidekick) saves thumbnails in two local folders: ~/.config/.thumbnails/large/*.png, and ~/.config/.thumbnails/normal/*.png ... I cannot make sense of how thunar indexes those thumbnails, or organizes them, but i suspect that the tens-of-thousands thumbnails one accumulates over time (on my main system built 12 months ago i have 25k+ just for the "local" thumbnails) can build up to the point where significant system overhead is being incurred.

Absent a database-like facility, that overhead is likely to increase esp. when one's various thumbdrives, removable drives/disks, and NAS-type devices are taken into account. That would explain thunar's erratic behavior when attempting to scroll through heavily-populated folders using thunar's GUI. Case in point: there's no stuttering (or perceptible delay) using the terminal to scroll through those very folders ...

Not a bug per se, but an architectural limitation?

Cheers, m4a

MountainDewManiac · 2018-10-23 22:31:31

mint4all wrote:

I cannot make sense of how thunar indexes those thumbnails, or organizes them, but i suspect that the tens-of-thousands thumbnails one accumulates over time (on my main system built 12 months ago i have 25k+ just for the "local" thumbnails) can build up to the point where significant system overhead is being incurred.

I delete mine once in a while, once per month or so. I run Bleachbit at that time, too.

Re: This thread, is there any support for "blacklisting" a particularly lengthy directory (or remote one that is not automatically identified as such) so that the thumbnail routine isn't run on it?

Regards,
MDM

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#1 2018-09-22 01:37:44

Thunar Stuttering

#2 2018-09-22 02:06:31

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#3 2018-09-23 10:41:56

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#4 2018-09-23 15:58:58

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#5 2018-09-23 21:35:30

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#6 2018-09-23 21:58:59

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#7 2018-09-24 00:58:30

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#8 2018-10-19 23:41:57

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#9 2018-10-20 02:21:36

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#10 2018-10-22 23:31:34

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#11 2018-10-23 00:25:47

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#12 2018-10-23 16:42:55

Re: Thunar Stuttering

#13 2018-10-23 22:31:31

Re: Thunar Stuttering

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