Bug 600500
| Summary: | hamster-applet 2.30.1 generates an unacceptable number of CPU wakeups-from-idle per second | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Fedora] Fedora | Reporter: | James Ralston <ralston> |
| Component: | hamster-applet | Assignee: | Mads Villadsen <maxx> |
| Status: | CLOSED UPSTREAM | QA Contact: | Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa> |
| Severity: | high | Docs Contact: | |
| Priority: | low | ||
| Version: | 13 | CC: | maxx |
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Target Release: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
| Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
| Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
| Last Closed: | 2010-06-06 18:16:28 UTC | Type: | --- |
| Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
| Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
| Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
| oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
| Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
| Embargoed: | |||
Note the reference to the bug I filed with upstream (bugzilla.gnome.org). It might be best to address this bug there... Ok, this was fixed upstream already: http://git.gnome.org/browse/hamster-applet/commit/?id=5dd38415494395436e9ebf80433fcbd199120217 It's a very simple patch. Please backport. The gnome 2.30.2 release is happening in about two weeks, so instead of pushing out multiple updates in a row I will wait for that release. Thank you for taking the time to report this bug. |
For hamster-applet-2.28.3-0.1.20100215git.fc12 on Fedora 12, hamster-applet generates very few interrupts per second. This is largely because if hamster applet is not active, it sits in a poll() loop that doesn't timeout until the next (clock wall) minute rolls over: poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=7, events=POLLIN}, {fd=11, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}, {fd=26, events=POLLIN}, {fd=29, events=POLLIN}, {fd=30, events=POLLIN}, {fd=28, events=POLLIN}, {fd=27, events=POLLIN}], 10, 22869 I.e., the timeout value (the third argument) varies between 0 and 60000 milliseconds. But this behavior changed with hamster-applet-2.30.1-1.fc13 on Fedora 13. Now, hamster-applet always seems to use 11 milliseconds for the poll() timeout. As a result, hamster-applet causes an additional ~180 wakeups-from-idle per second (using powertop to measure both with and without hamster-applet running). I'm not sure what problem the hamster-applet developers were trying to solve by making this change, but I'm sorry: it is TOTALLY unacceptable to have a non-active, non-focused panel applet generate this phenomenal amount wakeups-from-idle per second. Not only is it a waste of power, but for people using laptops, running hamster-applet could be the difference whether the laptop's batteries make it through the meeting/presentation, or whether the laptop's batteries die before then. When I take hamster-applet-2.28.3-0.1.20100215git.fc12.src.rpm and rebuild it for Fedora 13, it has the same polling behavior as on Fedora 12; that is, it sleeps between 0 and 60000 milliseconds. Thus, I know that other differences between Fedora 12 and Fedora 13 aren't the source of hamster-applet's unacceptable behavior; something in hamster-applet itself had to change to do this. In summary, this change is a severe problem that makes hamster-applet antagonistic to people using laptops or other low-power/battery-powered devices. It should be addressed ASAP.