Bug 208931

Summary:	sluggish response under high system load
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Austin Foxley <austinf>
Component:	xorg-x11-server	Assignee:	X/OpenGL Maintenance List <xgl-maint>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	rawhide	CC:	misek
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Last Closed:	2007-07-27 21:42:04 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Austin Foxley 2006-10-02 17:49:51 UTC

Description of problem:
When compiz is enabled, and the cpu is pegged doing something (like parsing xml
on a yum update), the whole desktop interface slows to a crawl (mouse, moving
windows, dektop switching). Also, other apps slow down considerably (totem will
start to skip). 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
X Window System Version 7.1.1
Build ID: xorg-x11-server 1.1.1-43.fc6 

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Turn on "Desktop Effects"
2. Start a high cpu activity
3. Observe sluggish mouse
  
Actual results:
Slow response time for all actions

Expected results:
System load should not effect mouse or interface response.

Additional info:
This is on decently fast cpu, and a nvidia card (running the beta 9625 drivers).
My laptop (which has an integrated intel graphics chipset) doesn't have any
problems like this.

I realize this might just be the nvidia drivers causing trouble, but I figured I
should document it, because I know other people are having the same problem.

Comment 1 Adam Jackson 2007-07-27 21:42:04 UTC

Yeah, this is a general problem, and is therefore really hard to fix in the
general case.

If you have specific workloads that cause unreasonable CPU usage by the X server
itself, please file those.  But there's not much X can do if the kernel doesn't
give it enough CPU time.