Thunderbird using 100% CPU on newly installed ArcaOS 5.0.6

[Dave Yeo]

It's one of the nice things about SeaMonkey, no telemetry. I don't think Thunderbird has any either.

[Dave Yeo]

On an idle system, open a Pentium-M version of FF to a blank page. Wait precisely 8 minutes from the time FF's window first appears. Nonstop bursts of activity will begin and never stop. Do the exact same with a 686 build (same profile) and there's no such activity.

I tested this with Dave's FF builds that are currently in 'incoming/' at hobbes. Months ago I discovered the same unexplained activity in SM, but there it takes 15 minutes. I looked at every possible entry in about:config for something that might control the timing but never found anything. I don't think it's associated with the FF "Health Report" (which I always turn off) or any other network activity.

Any ideas?

I just tested this with a fairly new profile, using the same Pentium-M build and with all libraries i686. After about 8 minutes, there was a burst of activity, then another one, then it went back to close to zero CPU usage and stayed there for another 10 or so minutes before I closed it.
Could be database cleaning or similar.

[Bennie Nelson]

Shame, as that is one thing that isn't very well tested.
Lets find out which thread is causing the high CPU load. Please download http://www.warpcave.com/betas/monitorthreads-0.4-shl-2020-10-13.zip and run at a cmd prompt and then run Thunderbird or Firefox for a bit and report which thread is using all the CPU.
Also, could you generate a trp report? Probably won't say much but one never knows. At a cmd prompt, do "set exceptq=Z" without the quotes then from the same prompt, fire up Thunderbird or Firefox after CDing to their program directory. Let the program run a bit and then close it. There should be a trp report in the program directory, please post it.

It looks like TID 12 is the main culprit, although FIREFOX PID 83 TID 1 shows up frequently, as well.

2020-12-05 12:06:07 FIREFOX.EXE PID 83 TID  1 248 mSec ready
2020-12-05 12:06:08 FIREFOX.EXE PID 83 TID 12 651 mSec ready
2020-12-05 12:06:09 FIREFOX.EXE PID 83 TID 12 713 mSec ready

[Pete]

Hi Dave

...
There's also the mystery of using the NSPR/NSS in netlabs-exp causing the browser to simple vanish now and again, should make sure the architecture is the same between the libraries and browser.

How can I recover from the above mistake? - ANPM will not let me downgrade any of the files involved because the remaining files to be downgraded currently require the installed version of the file that I am trying to downgrade. Bit of a "catch 22"...


Regards

Pete

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Pete, on the cmd line, something like

Code: [Select]

yum downgrade nspr nss nss-softokn nss-softokn-freebl
You might have to experiment a bit to find the exact packages to downgrade as I may have missed some. Helps to have ANPM open at the same time so you can see which you have installed. I have the devel packages also installed so even more complex

[Pete]

Hi Dave

I tried the yum downgrade command which results in a message that "all files are up to date or no downloads available".


Regards

Pete

[OS4User]

How can I recover from the above mistake? - ANPM will not let me downgrade any of the files involved because the remaining files to be downgraded currently require the installed version of the file that I am trying to downgrade. Bit of a "catch 22"...

I have faced the same.
yum downgrade nss nss-legacy nss-util nss-softokn nss-softokn-freebl
Helped me.

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Pete, you might have to clear the cache, easiest from ANPM

[Pete]

Hi All

When trying to downgrade packages on the command line (rather than in ANPM) I saw a message about unfinished transactions remaining with the suggestion to run yum-complete-transaction to finish those transactions. I suspect the "unfinished transactions remaining" are causing a problem - I wonder what it/they were...

I tried the suggested "yum-complete-transaction" which was a total failure - SYS1041 - so I installed the  yum-utils package which contains the yum-complete-transaction app, ran that app then retried downgrading nspr and nss packages which worked fine.


Thanks for all replies

Pete

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Pete. Use ANPM, go to Manage-->Yum Tools-->Maintenance-->Complete Transaction.
While there you might want to rebuild the database and clean all caches under Cleanup.
Hopefully that works.

[Pete]

Hi Dave

Hi Pete. Use ANPM, go to Manage-->Yum Tools-->Maintenance-->Complete Transaction.
While there you might want to rebuild the database and clean all caches under Cleanup.
Hopefully that works.

The ANPM Complete Transaction option was Disabled - probably because yum-utils was not installed; that option has become Enabled since installing yum-utils.


Regards

Pete

[Bennie Nelson]

It took a lot of retries selecting various options on the ArcaOS installation, but I've pinned the trouble to the Screen Saver. Since I don't need it, I've gotten into the habit of not installing it. Every time the Screen Saver is not installed, however, Firefox uses 100% CPU. I haven't timed it, but it looks like the high CPU usage kicks in about the time the Screen Saver would. When I install the Screen Saver, Firefox never uses 100% CPU continuously.

Bennie

[Dave Yeo]

OK, thanks for chasing this down. It's nsIdleServiceOS2, which queries the screensaver (sscore.dll)  for whether it is running and therefore the system is idle so Mozilla can do housekeeping (vacuuming the sqlite databases for example) without impacting the system. Guess it needs a check whether sscore.dll even exists on the system.

[Bennie Nelson]

Dave,

Subsequent to my posting, I re-installed one more time (with SS). With the freshly loaded system, I started FF and TOP. At the screen saver's idle check point time, FF woke up and started processing, but it did not peg the CPU.

Thanks for working with me on this.
Bennie

[Dave Yeo]

Seems that what is happening is that without finding sscore.dll, it falls back on UsePollMode() which must have a bug somewhere on our system, possibly in the timer stuff. Someone else mentioned that the Bitwise builds of Firefox didn't have this issue.
Have you tried it with the screensaver installed but not activated? You can nuke the .dssaver directory in %HOME% to return it to a newly installed state. Seems that the VirtualBox environment may make the problem more noticeable. I'll experiment here or perhaps reboot to Linux and use VBox.