GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 143851
metacity stuck in an infinite loop
Last modified: 2009-08-15 18:40:50 UTC
I don't know how to reproduce it, but it occurs quite often. Visible symptoms are : -CPU to max (in the cpu monitor applet) -can no longer change the focussed window, or change workspace. I have to kill -HUP the window manager. Here is a gdb stack trace:
+ Trace 47050
I use version 2.8.1-1 from Debian PowerPC Here is the line in top: 12481 hub 20 0 9156 8348 8260 R 76.6 2.2 7:33.82 metacity
WOW. Update. While committing this bug, metacity ended up going out of this loop. I don't know what caused that.
I also experience this bug after having been in X for usually over a day or so. I use version 2.8.1 (running Gentoo). Changing window focus/virtual desktops is possible but it is incredibly slow. I can see the border around the windows being drawn very slowly. The applications themselves seem to run OK when this is happening. As stated, a kill -HUP fixes it (temporarily, for another day or so).
Oddly enough, the first few frames of the stack trace (from gdk_interp_type_get_type down to gdk_pixbuf_scale_simple) basically match the commonly reported (but long since fixed) stack trace found in bug 135224 for gnome-system-monitor. That probably doesn't mean anything, but it was unusual enough that I thought I'd mention it. Michael: Can you verify that you get the same stack trace as Hubert so that we can be certain you are experiencing the same bug and not just another similar one?
Strangely I haven't gotten this problem for a while. I'm at version 2.8.1-3 (Debian), so unless they did apply a patch sent to upstream, it is the same code.
Here's my gdb stack trace. I'm a little worried, as it doesn't really look anything like Hubert's one. I'm using gdb 6.2: (gdb) where
+ Trace 49972
Here's the line in top: 31957 mike 15 0 16712 7892 13m S 1.0 0.8 3:06.49 metacity Also interesting is the line in top for the X process: 31912 root 25 0 434m 189m 146m R 88.5 18.7 67:37.05 X Metacity never really gets high CPU usage when this happens, it seems to only be X. I'm running X.org 6.7.0 (xorg-x11-6.7.0-r2 on Gentoo). This and the stack trace may indicate it is not the exact same bug as Hubert. Sorry for the delay, I was not running Gnome for a while, but am back now. It's still the same metacity (2.8.1), and this is the first time the slowdown has happened since resuming use (a couple of days ago).
Michael: That stack trace is unfortunately useless. Can you recompile without optimization flags, include the -g flag for debugging symbols, and make sure to use FEATURES=nostrip in /etc/make.conf?
Also, is there any chance someone can get us a verbose log? To do so: 1. Reduce your desktop to as few windows as possible to reproduce the bug 2. Run METACITY_VERBOSE=1 METACITY_USE_LOGFILE=1 metacity --replace 3. On stdout metacity will print the name of the logfile 4. Reproduce the bug as quickly as possible 5. Kill the metacity you started above to stop the logfile from growing any longer 6. Compress the logfile and attach it to this bug report I'm really curious (besides a log which would be the most helpful) about any options you both might have set (choice of theme, click/sloppy/mouse focus, autoraise, reduced resources, etc.). Also, bug 152169 may be related.
Hi Elijah! Thanks for your tips. I have set up metacity as instructed and will hopefully get a useful stack trace next time it occurs. I don't have any non-default metacity options, save for action_double_click_titlebar = toggle_maximize, 6 virtual desktops and the Nuvola theme.
I'm going to mark this bug NEEDINFO; it appears the maintainer can't do anything else without more debug information.
I haven't had the problem anymore on my side. I'm tempted to mark it as "can not reproduce". sorry for the noise.
After having updated Metacity and various other possibly related components (X, etc.) I also have not seen this bug occur.
/me wonders if it was just a buggy theme that was fixed in newer versions Okay, well thanks for following up, I'll go ahead and mark this as closed. Let us know if you run into any other problems, though.