Bug 90760

Summary: Screensavers consuming too much CPU
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Michael Waite <mwaite>
Component: xscreensaverAssignee: Bill Nottingham <notting>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.3CC: rvokal, tao
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2003-06-19 18:07:47 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description Michael Waite 2003-05-13 14:11:16 UTC 
I did see a few issues still, but none of them are as serious as before. A
couple still chew up a lot of cpu.

-"Maze" does not work, and causes X to chew up to 99.9% of the cpu, but the
difference from before is that the machine is still usable, before it wasn't.
- Decayscreen chews up 80-89% cpu.

Not sure if you care about these other screen saver issues, but since I saw them
I thought I'd mention them even though there is no real impact.

- Crystal will cause any screen savers run after it to not work
- Flag is in the list twice
- GLPlanet is blank on GX260s
- Lisa & Noseguy don't work, just show previous screen saver not moving
- Pipes is just flickers on GX260s

I only tried on Gnome since that is where I saw the issues before.
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Action by: mwaite
Issue Registered
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Action by: mwaite
Searching Bugzilla now for previous entries.

mwaite assigned to issue for Nortel/CSC.

Category set to: X Windows::Gnome
Status set to: Waiting on Tech
Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 2003-05-19 00:11:05 UTC 
Many of the screensavers try to draw as fast as possible... this will cause them
to use CPU. If this is not desired, pick a different one, or, for instance, a
blank screen.

The GX260-related problems sound like graphics card specific issues.
Comment 2 Jamie Zawinski 2003-06-19 10:08:32 UTC 
For the record, *none* of the screensavers try to draw as fast as possible: all
of them (by default) spend enough time in usleep() that they should not be
loading the system significantly.  Plus, xscreensaver runs all of them at a low
priority with nice.

(The unfortunate exception to this is the case of OpenGL hacks running on
systems without GL hardware, in which case, the X server itself tremendously
loads the machine.)

However, it would be normal for a screensaver to consume 80%+ of the CPU -- if
the CPU would otherwise have been *completely idle*.  That is, the saver should
never make the load go above 1.0, though *approaching* 1.0 would be expected.
Comment 3 Bill Nottingham 2003-06-19 18:07:47 UTC 
Closing as not a bug; as jwz said things are acting more or less as designed.