Re: [Evolution] BUG: frozen while looking up new mail

[Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj ximian com>]

might just be the message-list redrawing? that would explain the pango
calls. might also be the folder-tree redrawing with unread count updates
(or maybe the corba calls are causing a temporary freeze?)

do you have a lot of folders or a lot of messages in the folder you are
viewing when it freezes?

Jeff

On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 12:49, Florin Andrei wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 23:55, Not Zed wrote:
>
> > > And yet the symptoms are the same: as long as Evo is accessing the IMAP
> > > server, it's solid frozen. Once it's done updating the Inbox, it works
> > > again.
>
> > Well how about that backtrace?  Looks like your others must've been done
> > at the wrong time, i.e. after said lockup was over.
>
> I'll do my best to get another backtrace to you guys soon.
>  
> > I thought you actually had a hard freeze.  A hard freeze is one from
> > which it never recovers.  A delay for a couple of seconds isn't a hard
> > freeze.
>
> That's probably my mistake, i didn't explain it clearly enough.
>
> It is not an unrecoverable problem. Evo gets frozen for a few seconds,
> while it's checking out the IMAP server. Once it's done with whatever's
> supposed to do there, it starts working again.
>
> > From a user's p.o.v., the application becomes unresponsive for like
> 3...5 seconds every time it's automatically checking for new email.
> Yet somehow all events triggered by user during that time are not lost:
> they're quickly executed in a split-second once the freeze is over.
>
> > It just sounds like your system is busy, and the kernel isn't coping
> > well for that instant, but thats just based on the info you've given us
> > so far.
>
> Nope, that's not the case. Other applications are working fine during
> that time, not only on my dual-CPU Fedora system, but also on the
> single-CPU RH9 machine (which is supposed to be less able to cope with
> CPU hogs, being a single-CPU and all...).
> Indeed there is a CPU usage spike when the freeze happens, and indeed
> Evolution is the process eating up cycles, but that does not affect
> other processes. I can use Mozilla or OpenOffice just fine during those
> 3...5 seconds while Evo is solid frozen.
>
> During the freeze, Evolution is eating up a whole CPU (the other CPU
> stays idle), exclusively in userspace. "top" does not reveal any system,
> irq or iowait usage due to Evo. The user cycles are at 100%, idle,
> system, iowait, etc. are at 0%.
> Once the freeze is over, the CPU usage gets back to normal.
>
> In any case, on both workstations i can (and do) use big CPU hogs while
> using the desktop - things like MPEG2 encoders, etc., which keep the
> CPUs flat on the ceiling for hours. The desktop sluggishness is barely
> noticeable, the apps are responsive and all is well (i can even listen
> to MP3 meanwhile).
> It would take a whole lot more than that to freeze those systems just
> because of the load. This is not the case with Evolution; it has, like,
> what? 5 or 6 threads? pfffft! that's nothing, that's how my video
> encoders (transcode + mjpegtools) usually run.
>
> And if "top" tells the truth, it is only one Evo thread that grabs a
> CPU. The other threads do not even show up in the first 10...20 lines
> (i'm using the "H" command to tell it to display threads). And it is the
> "main" (or "parent" or whatever) thread that does it - i looked at the
> PID with "top", then i did a "ps axmf" and identified it, it's PID
> 31246, which seems to be the parent:
>
> 31246 ?        S      3:04 evolution
> 31247 ?        S      0:00  \_ evolution
> 31248 ?        S      0:00  \_ evolution
> 31249 ?        S      0:00  \_ evolution
> 31252 ?        S      0:00  \_ evolution
> 31254 ?        S      0:00  \_ evolution
>
> If i'm not making sense, please excuse me, i'm not a programmer.
>
> At this point, i suspect the problem should be actually easy to
> reproduce. Just perform a vanilla Fedora Core 1 install, no custom libs
> or apps, no Ximian Gnome (but do select the Gnome package category when
> installing Fedora, of course), no nothing, setup a Cyrus IMAPd server
> somewhere, and configure Evolution to query the server every 60 seconds.
> I am not sure about vanilla RH9 installs - RH9 has Evo-1.2 but i'm not
> using that, i upgraded to Evo-1.4, and i'm seeing the same issues with
> it. I have no idea whether or not Evo-1.2 has the problem.
>
> Maybe the problem happens with other IMAP servers as well, i don't know.
> In any case, it does not look like an IMAP server problem. Even if it
> were, the IMAP client should not get DoS'ed no matter what the server
> does.