GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 597654
Excessive CPU usage.
Last modified: 2009-10-07 14:30:03 UTC
Mutter take a lot of CPU, permanently (even when the computer is idle). This CPU usage is due to mutter, as it also happens using mutter/gnome-panel, and not only when using mutter/gnome-shell. This is very annoying as it interferes with cpu frequency scaling. A core must stay at 100% to accomodate mutter's CPU usage. Attached screenshot shows: - Xorg: 28% - gconfd-2: 18% - mutter: 14% In comparison, using metacity/gnome-panel, I get something like this: - Xorg: 2% - metacity: 1% - gconfd-2: 0% How to reproduce: - Using traditional metacity/gnome-panel layout, run 'mutter --replace' - Run top.
[sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:19:55 CEST 2009 sf 2559 0.0 0.0 16824 3592 tty1 R 10:19 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity sf 2563 0.0 0.0 3188 736 pts/1 S+ 10:19 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:19:56 CEST 2009 sf 2582 0.0 0.1 17276 5928 tty1 R 10:19 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity sf 2586 0.0 0.0 3188 736 pts/1 S+ 10:19 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:19:56 CEST 2009 sf 2601 0.0 0.0 3188 740 pts/1 S+ 10:19 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:19:57 CEST 2009 sf 2614 0.0 0.1 17276 5908 tty1 R 10:19 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity sf 2618 0.0 0.0 3188 740 pts/1 S+ 10:19 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:19:57 CEST 2009 sf 2632 0.0 0.1 16972 4156 tty1 R 10:19 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity sf 2636 0.0 0.0 3188 736 pts/1 S+ 10:19 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:19:58 CEST 2009 sf 2653 0.0 0.0 3188 736 pts/1 S+ 10:19 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:19:59 CEST 2009 sf 2670 0.0 0.0 16840 3924 tty1 R 10:19 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity sf 2674 0.0 0.0 3188 740 pts/1 S+ 10:19 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:20:01 CEST 2009 sf 2735 0.0 0.0 3188 736 pts/1 S+ 10:20 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity sf 2736 0.0 0.0 15236 1052 tty1 R 10:20 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:20:02 CEST 2009 sf 2742 0.0 0.1 17276 5932 tty1 R 10:20 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity sf 2746 0.0 0.0 3188 736 pts/1 S+ 10:20 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:20:02 CEST 2009 sf 2757 0.0 0.1 17276 5936 tty1 R 10:20 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity sf 2761 0.0 0.0 3188 736 pts/1 S+ 10:20 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity [sf@noys] ~ $ date; ps aux | grep metacity Wed Oct 7 10:20:03 CEST 2009 sf 2776 0.0 0.0 0 0 tty1 Z 10:20 0:00 [metacity] <defunct> sf 2780 0.0 0.0 3188 740 pts/1 S+ 10:20 0:00 grep --color=auto metacity sf 2781 0.0 0.0 15256 1056 tty1 R 10:20 0:00 /usr/bin/metacity
Created attachment 144933 [details] Top screenshot
Ok, so after further investigation, I could determine that this behaviour only occurs when calling `mutter --replace`. If I do `killall metacity; mutter` it works as expected and metacity isn't restarted every second or so... Note that I'm using Debian Sid, so: - mutter from today's master - gnome-session 2.26.1 - metacity 2.28.0
There's been a patch for this in Bugzilla for the last couple of months (we patch the Fedora Metacity, I think Ubuntu has a patch as well in their packaging.) This really needs to get fixed. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 588119 ***