According to "top", /usr/bin/X is using between 30% and 60% of my CPU (and can go higher). this is on an AMD A6-3670 (quad core) system running Kubuntu (13.04 beta), and my new nVidia G210 graphics card with proprietary drivers. I had the same problems with the onboard GPU in 13.04 and 12.10 before it.
Eg: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1357 root 20 0 321m 207m 49m R 48.9 1.3 214:58.86 Xorg
Why would X CPU be so high, and what can I do about it?
On 27 March 2013 14:29, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
Why would X CPU be so high, and what can I do about it?
Additional info:
CPU usage hit 100% (and was sustained around 90%) so I did some more digging.
I had kate (test editor) running, and killing that dropped X CPU usage down to around 30% briefly (several seconds), so I thought that was the cause. But it's now back to ~100% and I'm not using the PC (I switched to a different PC to send this email).
Next I killed LibreOffice, and once again it dropped to about 20-30% - again for several seconds, but it's now creeping up again (currently ~60%).
Neither kate of LO were in focus when CPU usage was at 100%. I'm currently using about 25% of my 16GB RAM and haven't ever seen it go close to 100% even with a gazillion tabs open in Chrome and Firefox.
I have previously switched off desktop effects and that made no difference to CPU usage. "kwin --replace &" doesn't help, but logging out and back in again does (for a while).
Thoughts?
On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:07:23 +0000 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
On 27 March 2013 14:29, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
Why would X CPU be so high, and what can I do about it?
Additional info:
CPU usage hit 100% (and was sustained around 90%) so I did some more digging.
Do you get the same symptoms with the free (i.e. nonproprietary) drivers?
Mick ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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On 29 March 2013 17:04, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
Do you get the same symptoms with the free (i.e. nonproprietary) drivers?
Yes.
Sequence so far, all off which exhibited the problem: Kubuntu 12.10, onboard ATI, FOSS Kubuntu 13.04 beta, onboard ATI, FOSS Kubuntu 13.04 beta, nVidia G210, FOSS Kubuntu 13.04 beta, nVidia G210, Proprietary
Each step was an attempt to improve things, each has failed (so far!).
On Sat, 30 Mar 2013 09:07:10 +0000 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
On 29 March 2013 17:04, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
Do you get the same symptoms with the free (i.e. nonproprietary) drivers?
Yes.
Sequence so far, all off which exhibited the problem: Kubuntu 12.10, onboard ATI, FOSS Kubuntu 13.04 beta, onboard ATI, FOSS Kubuntu 13.04 beta, nVidia G210, FOSS Kubuntu 13.04 beta, nVidia G210, Proprietary
Each step was an attempt to improve things, each has failed (so far!).
Wierd.
The only obvious common element there is KDE. What happens if you boot from a live CD/DVD/USB stick with another desktop (say Xubuntu 13.04)?
Also what is the full command line shown for Xorg (running htop, ps -ef or ps aux or pressing "c" in top will show more detail than bare top alone). Maybe the KDE display manager is playing up.
Mick
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On 30 March 2013 13:06, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
The only obvious common element there is KDE. What happens if you boot from a live CD/DVD/USB stick with another desktop (say Xubuntu 13.04)?
Good question, I will try to give that a try. Actually, running from a Kubuntu live CD would be useful diagnostically to see if it's something else I have installed.
CPU was at ~100% this morning; the PC's been unused (but left running) since Thursday.
Also what is the full command line shown for Xorg (running htop, ps -ef or ps aux or pressing "c" in top will show more detail than bare top alone). Maybe the KDE display manager is playing up.
root 1359 1326 68 Mar28 tty7 3-08:57:19 /usr/bin/X :0 -core -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch -background none
On 2 April 2013 09:11, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
CPU was at ~100% this morning; the PC's been unused (but left running) since Thursday.
OK, so this is weird.
After sending the last email, I started killing apps one at a tme to see if I could find anything that reduced X CPU usage. The "obvious" apps like Chrome and Firefox (both of which were open, both of which had dozens of tabs open) had no impact.
Killing dropbox resulted in an instant drop of CPU usage from 100% to 0%.
Further research shows that when Dropbox is performing a sync, it shows an animated tray icon and CPU usage goes to 100%. On completion it reverts to a static "green tick" icon and CPU usage goes back to normal. However, if (as I had) you have an unreadable file in your Dropbox folder, the sync fails and the animated icon remains, causing CPU usage to stay at 100%.
The problem is presumably in system tray somewhere. I found this thread: http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=110294 .. where someone else is having the same problem, although it's not clear that Dropbox is relevant in his case.
This KDE bug looks relevant: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=313803
More digging needed I think.
On Tue, 2 Apr 2013 10:07:51 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
After sending the last email, I started killing apps one at a tme to see if I could find anything that reduced X CPU usage. The "obvious" apps like Chrome and Firefox (both of which were open, both of which had dozens of tabs open) had no impact.
Killing dropbox resulted in an instant drop of CPU usage from 100% to 0%.
So. One more reason not to use Dropbox then.
Mick
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On 2 April 2013 13:52, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
On Tue, 2 Apr 2013 10:07:51 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
Killing dropbox resulted in an instant drop of CPU usage from 100% to 0%.
So. One more reason not to use Dropbox then.
The more I look at this the more it looks like a problem in KDE that Dropbox is triggering (others are finding the same in (eg) VMware, for example).
Dropbox has one advantage over its competition: I got 50GB free with my phone. However, given that I'm not even close to the free 2GB usage yet that's a bit meaningless. What would you recommend as an alternative? Minimum requirement is clients for Linux, Windows and Android, with obviously the ability to sync but also to share certain files/directories between users.
Nothing gets stored that I wouldn't be prepared to send by email, so anything of "value" gets encrypted (at my end - everything is presumably encrypted at theirs regardless).
(Glad you seem to be closer to finding the source of the problem.)
Thanks, me too! Shame that instead of wasting a bit of time rebooting my PC today I've "wasted" most of it researching pixmaps handling in X though...
Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk
Dropbox has one advantage over its competition: I got 50GB free with my phone. However, given that I'm not even close to the free 2GB usage yet that's a bit meaningless. What would you recommend as an alternative? Minimum requirement is clients for Linux, Windows and Android, with obviously the ability to sync but also to share certain files/directories between users.
Owncloud, either with your own storage (it can use lots) but I don't remember if anyone does loss-leader offers like the free 2GB for it yet. It's a pretty buoyant market just now, it's quite a gamble to offer lots of free accounts and I'm not sure why you would do it much unless you're desperate to grow quick and to hell with margins.
It has rough edges from time to time, but so do the anti-social alternatives like Dropbox, as you've found...
Regards,
On Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:31:16 +0100 MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop allegedly wrote:
Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk
Dropbox has one advantage over its competition: I got 50GB free with my phone. However, given that I'm not even close to the free 2GB usage yet that's a bit meaningless. What would you recommend as an alternative? Minimum requirement is clients for Linux, Windows and Android, with obviously the ability to sync but also to share certain files/directories between users.
Owncloud, either with your own storage (it can use lots) but I don't remember if anyone does loss-leader offers like the free 2GB for it yet. It's a pretty buoyant market just now, it's quite a gamble to offer lots of free accounts and I'm not sure why you would do it much unless you're desperate to grow quick and to hell with margins.
It has rough edges from time to time, but so do the anti-social alternatives like Dropbox, as you've found...
Hmmm. I've read a bit about owncloud recently, but not yet tried it. Is it really useful on a local server (in a way that a simple NAS would not be?)
Mick ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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mick mbm@rlogin.net
Hmmm. I've read a bit about owncloud recently, but not yet tried it. Is it really useful on a local server (in a way that a simple NAS would not be?)
Depends what you're trying to use it for, really. The co-op finds it useful and hosts ownclouds for clients, with clients on Linux and Android as far as I know.
My own practical use has been limited because I'm at the end of one of yon pathetic ADSLs for now. It's like being a storekeeper who isn't able to use the very attractive products much. At least you choose who gets the data and can encrypt it with some backends.
Hope that explains,
On Tue, 2 Apr 2013 14:09:56 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
On 2 April 2013 13:52, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
On Tue, 2 Apr 2013 10:07:51 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
Killing dropbox resulted in an instant drop of CPU usage from 100% to 0%.
So. One more reason not to use Dropbox then.
Dropbox has one advantage over its competition: I got 50GB free with my phone. However, given that I'm not even close to the free 2GB usage yet that's a bit meaningless. What would you recommend as an alternative? Minimum requirement is clients for Linux, Windows and Android, with obviously the ability to sync but also to share certain files/directories between users.
Actually, none of the so-called "cloud" backup-up/sharing/syncing products, and for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, the architectural/usability issue of having to have a fast internet connection always available. 50Gig of store is no damned good to me at the end of an ADSL line which has an upload speed of around 0.4 Mbps (and of course is completely useless in the absence of a connection). Pity people like Tony who have to rely on 3G connectivity. Now give me 10 Mbps in both directions and I /might/ reconsider.
Secondly, I /really/ dislike the idea of giving my data (and metadata about my connections) to some unknown (and decidedly untrusted) third party. Most of the EULA's I have read mean that I surrrender my rights to that data. And what happens if they go bust, or just refuse me access at a later date? Sure I coould get around some of that by having a decent paid for contract, but I recall reading that only around 2-3% of "customers" actually pay rather than take the freebee, and as the man said. "if you ain't paying, then you are the product".
Thirdly, I just don't trust the other party not to a) snoop on my data, b) give my data to a third party (or to a snoopy government official), b) keep my data secure from unauthorised access by malicious insiders or outsiders. Here Dropbox are one of the worst offenders. They lied about applying AES 256 bit encyption of the data at rest (they later admitted that they would pass the data /unencrypted/ to a federal agency on receipt of a court summons. - How does that work then?). They have lost user emails following a breach of an employee's account, and a failure in their on-line authentication mechanism exposed user's files to the whole world a year or so ago.
Sure I could get around the snooping problem by encrypting my own data (as you say you do), but that won't help me if I want to sync data (such as firefox offers to do with your bookmarks) rather than simply store and share data.
I confess to an "old skool" prejudice to wanting to be able to "touch" my data (or at least to know where the hell it is). Even though I run my own mail server on a VM, I am bloody minded enough to actually download the mail to my local store (and back it up to separate NAS boxes) rather than leave it on the server and access it via IMAP.
Mick
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On 2 April 2013 20:23, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
Actually, none of the so-called "cloud" backup-up/sharing/syncing products, and for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, the architectural/usability issue of having to have a fast internet connection always available. 50Gig of store is no damned good to me at the end of an ADSL line which has an upload speed of around 0.4 Mbps (and of course is completely useless in the absence of a connection). Pity people like Tony who have to rely on 3G connectivity.
That's definitely an argument against cloud *storage*, but not really against cloud *sync*. Since you only access your files locally most of the time the speed of the connection isn't so important, unless you want to store large files there. My use case is normally playing with scripts (eg my ongoing efforts to pick up some Python skills); storing the .py scripts in my Dropbox folder means I can edit them and play with them there directly on my PC, but when I get home they're in my Dropbox folder at home to continue playing with if I choose. The scripts are only small text files so the sync wouldn't be a problem on a slow ADSL line. (As for pitying people relying on 3G: I usually find 3G to be faster than my office ADSL connection, although we do now have two lines that between them on a good day with a following wind will get us up into the giddy heights of about 4Mbps.)
An obvious alternative is to dump the files on a USB stick, but I'd rate the chances of my losing the USB stick higher than Dropbox losing my data.
Secondly, I /really/ dislike the idea of giving my data (and metadata about my connections) to some unknown (and decidedly untrusted) third party.
Which is why I treat the likes of Dropbox the way I treat email - if I wouldn't be prepared to send it via email it doesn't go into Dropbox. Which means anything vaguely sensitive only goes that way after encryption.
[...] Here Dropbox are one of the worst offenders. They lied about applying AES 256 bit encyption of the data at rest (they later admitted that they would pass the data /unencrypted/ to a federal agency on receipt of a court summons.
- How does that work then?).
I don't know the details, but if they encrypt but also hold the keys then surely it's quite possible to do this? The point of-course being that this is why encrypting your own data is so important.
I confess to an "old skool" prejudice to wanting to be able to "touch" my data (or at least to know where the hell it is).
With Dropbox I can touch my data: it's always on my PC, network or no network. I can't be 100% sure where *else* it is, but since it's either noddy Python scripts that are no use to anyone or its encrypted I don't really care too much about that.
The thing is, nothing is ever completely "secure". You can touch your NAS, until someone breaks in and takes it. If you encrypt it so that doesn't matter, then you still have to worry about not having another copy (or having the other copy taken at the same time). If you back it up, encrypted, somewhere away from home, and then you automate that process, you're not that far from a cloud service anyway. The only way to protect your data properly from prying eyes is to encrypt it in a way that you're confident of. Once you've done that, if you really are confident, it shouldn't matter if you give copies of it to anyone passing.
I am keen to look at OwnCloud because I would feel more comfortable having complete control of my data. But I am also aware that unless I properly secure my server, and keep up to date with any security flaws in OwnCloud etc, then my data is at as much risk - if not more risk - on a self-hosted server than it would be at Dropbox. (I'm using Dropbox in the generic sense - there are lots of other Dropbox-like services and some are better than others.)
Mark
On Wed, 3 Apr 2013 07:24:26 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
On 2 April 2013 20:23, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
architectural/usability issue of having to have a fast internet connection always available. 50Gig of store is no damned good to me at the end of an ADSL
That's definitely an argument against cloud *storage*, but not really against cloud *sync*. Since you only access your files locally most of the time the speed of the connection isn't so important, unless you want to store large files there.
You mentioned that you had a 50Gig store with your 'phone. That's a lot more than is needed for "sync" alone and points to a use case different to yours. I think the assumption by dropbox (and others) here is that you /will/ store more in the "cloud". Look at the otherwise really tasty looking laptop developed by Google - the Chromebook Pixel - it's "storage" spec says: "One terabyte Google Drive cloud storage for three years and 32GB solid state drive".
Thanks, but no thanks.
My use case is normally playing with scripts (eg my ongoing efforts to pick up some Python skills); storing the .py scripts in my Dropbox folder means I can edit them and play with them there directly on my PC, but when I get home they're in my Dropbox folder at home to continue playing with if I choose.
Stick with that use case. :-)
[...] Here Dropbox are one of the worst offenders. They lied about applying AES 256 bit encyption of the data at rest (they later admitted that they would pass the data /unencrypted/ to a federal agency on receipt of a court summons.
- How does that work then?).
I don't know the details, but if they encrypt but also hold the keys then surely it's quite possible to do this? The point of-course being that this is why encrypting your own data is so important.
Sure, but dropbox claimed that no-one could access locally encrypted data. So the assumption was that the key was somehow related to your dropbox password. It later transpired that the keys were likely really stored on the dropbox server and only policy prevented decryption. See Miguel de Icaza's commentary at http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Apr-19.html
The thing is, nothing is ever completely "secure".
Agreed. But I like to be in charge of my own destiny. I see a drift away from local autonomy towards contractual arrangements with (very) large corporates. If you in turn are a large corporate, then you may have some leverage with the supplier and may be able to influence contractual terms. For the rest of us I worry.
Mick
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On 3 April 2013 15:38, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
You mentioned that you had a 50Gig store with your 'phone. That's a lot more than is needed for "sync" alone and points to a use case different to yours.
Indeed. On the other hand, it was a factor when picking a provider, on the "just in case" basis. At home I have a decent cable connection (60Mbps) so backup would be a possibility, although in practice 50GB is too small for backups and I use a different service for that anyway. I very much doubt I'll ever use the full capability of the Dropbox account, except maybe on a temporary basis ("can you upload this 20GB file somewhere I can access it?")
Sure, but dropbox claimed that no-one could access locally encrypted data. So the assumption was that the key was somehow related to your dropbox password. It later transpired that the keys were likely really stored on the dropbox server and only policy prevented decryption. See Miguel de Icaza's commentary at http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Apr-19.html
OK, I've read up a bit on this now. As some people pointed out (in the comments on the above blog post) some of this was obvious from the start: if you can share files between users then they must have a way to decrypt.
As I said, I always assumed this to be the case - even if they stated otherwise, unless I could audit it myself it's my responsibility to ensure my own data is encrypted if I care about it.
For a "better" way to do things, see SpiderOak: https://spideroak.com/blog/20100827150530-why-spideroak-doesnt-de-duplicate-...
It's interesting not least for the discussion of the reasons why deduplicating data between customers is dangerous.
Agreed. But I like to be in charge of my own destiny. I see a drift away from local autonomy towards contractual arrangements with (very) large corporates.
The problem is with the extent to which you can avoid this; I prefer to embrace it but mitigate the risks.
Hosting my own server is great, for example, but in practice I don't really host it myself, I just manage my own (virtual) server on someone else's network. I could do it at home, but apart from it being slow (even over a 60Mbps cable line) all the data still goes via Virgin, who I would trust less than Dropbox. So I would prefer to encrypt my own data, and use Dropbox (and for redundancy, also use Ubuntu One, Google Drive, etc). If any of them change their business model or go bust, I lose the cloud data but don't lose the master copies and can move things around as I see fit.
I don't like being tied to any one company. My email is with Google but I can move it all whenever I want to (and I have an archive off Google's servers). I host with a couple of hosting providers but could move whenever I want to - everything's designed such that an rsync between servers if pretty much all that's needed to migrate. Anyone who wants to lock me in (eg Apple) I steer well clear of. Any data I care about is encrypted and duplicated across multiple services (of which my own hardware is always one).
If you in turn are a large corporate, then you may have some leverage with the supplier and may be able to influence contractual terms. For the rest of us I worry.
Large corporates have leverage, but the rest of us can (if we choose to be) be far more mobile and fickle with our selections. I have probably a dozen domains with Google Mail but could move them all in an afternoon (likely with no loss of service) if I ever needed to. Corporates can't do that, and that's the power over my own destiny that I enjoy (and take care to maintain).
Mark
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