Hi all.

I'm having a performance issue with gnome shell and I wonder if anyone
can provide me with some advice.
Gnome shell seems to be using a lot of my cpu resources.
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
949 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m S 203.3 5.4 136:04.53
gnome-shell

When I enable threaded mode in top (H) is see this:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
953 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 50.1 5.4 31:22.91
gnome-shell
955 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 48.7 5.4 31:41.81
gnome-shell
952 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 47.1 5.4 31:03.14
gnome-shell
954 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 45.1 5.4 31:22.46 gnome-shell

That is it's using about 50% of each of my cores on my quad core system.
This high cpu usage starts when I run a command that produces a lot of
output on the terminal.
For my own use case I was importing the boost repostory into git.
git svn clone http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost
But the problem can be reproduced using the 'yes' command as well.

Can anyone explain this high cpu usage?
It happens even if I minimize the window producing the output.
Is it worth submitting a bug report for it?

I'm on a T510 Lenovo laptop with an updated Arch and I'm using the
nouveau driver.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Regards,
Pico

Hi Pico,

Have you tried to check your cpu usage after disabling all the
gnome-shell-extensions? And how about the cpu usage when you run
the command in tty rather than gnome-terminal?

Regards,
Z.


On Fri, 2012-08-31 at 13:32 +0200, Pico Geyer wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I'm having a performance issue with gnome shell and I wonder if anyone
> can provide me with some advice.
> Gnome shell seems to be using a lot of my cpu resources.
> PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
> 949 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m S 203.3 5.4 136:04.53
> gnome-shell
>
> When I enable threaded mode in top (H) is see this:
> PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
> 953 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 50.1 5.4 31:22.91
> gnome-shell
> 955 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 48.7 5.4 31:41.81
> gnome-shell
> 952 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 47.1 5.4 31:03.14
> gnome-shell
> 954 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 45.1 5.4 31:22.46 gnome-shell
>
> That is it's using about 50% of each of my cores on my quad core system.
> This high cpu usage starts when I run a command that produces a lot of
> output on the terminal.
> For my own use case I was importing the boost repostory into git.
> git svn clone http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost
> But the problem can be reproduced using the 'yes' command as well.
>
> Can anyone explain this high cpu usage?
> It happens even if I minimize the window producing the output.
> Is it worth submitting a bug report for it?
>
> I'm on a T510 Lenovo laptop with an updated Arch and I'm using the
> nouveau driver.
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
> Regards,
> Pico

Hi Zhengyu,

Thanks for your response.
I was running a minimal set of extensions, but even after disabling
all of them, there is no change.

You mean a real tty (Ctrl - Alt - F1)?
If so, when I run the command on that tty the problem is not present.
Gnome shell only reached a maximum of 50% and not 200% as perviously shown.

Regards,
Pico

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Zhengyu Xu <xzy3186@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Pico,
>
> Have you tried to check your cpu usage after disabling all the
> gnome-shell-extensions? And how about the cpu usage when you run
> the command in tty rather than gnome-terminal?
>
> Regards,
> Z.
>
>
> On Fri, 2012-08-31 at 13:32 +0200, Pico Geyer wrote:
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm having a performance issue with gnome shell and I wonder if anyone
>> can provide me with some advice.
>> Gnome shell seems to be using a lot of my cpu resources.
>> PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
>> 949 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m S 203.3 5.4 136:04.53
>> gnome-shell
>>
>> When I enable threaded mode in top (H) is see this:
>> PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
>> 953 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 50.1 5.4 31:22.91
>> gnome-shell
>> 955 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 48.7 5.4 31:41.81
>> gnome-shell
>> 952 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 47.1 5.4 31:03.14
>> gnome-shell
>> 954 pico 20 0 1923m 204m 21m R 45.1 5.4 31:22.46 gnome-shell
>>
>> That is it's using about 50% of each of my cores on my quad core system.
>> This high cpu usage starts when I run a command that produces a lot of
>> output on the terminal.
>> For my own use case I was importing the boost repostory into git.
>> git svn clone http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost
>> But the problem can be reproduced using the 'yes' command as well.
>>
>> Can anyone explain this high cpu usage?
>> It happens even if I minimize the window producing the output.
>> Is it worth submitting a bug report for it?
>>
>> I'm on a T510 Lenovo laptop with an updated Arch and I'm using the
>> nouveau driver.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
>> Regards,
>> Pico
>
>

> I'm having a performance issue with gnome shell and I wonder if anyone
> can provide me with some advice.
...
> I'm on a T510 Lenovo laptop with an updated Arch and I'm using the
> nouveau driver.

Can you paste the output of (it should be 2 lines):
glxinfo | grep render

It should say
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: [something about nouveau]


--
damjan

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Damjan Georgievski <gdamjan@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm having a performance issue with gnome shell and I wonder if anyone
>> can provide me with some advice.
> ...
>> I'm on a T510 Lenovo laptop with an updated Arch and I'm using the
>> nouveau driver.
>
> Can you paste the output of (it should be 2 lines):
> glxinfo | grep render
>
> It should say
> direct rendering: Yes
> OpenGL renderer string: [something about nouveau]

Hi damjan,

Here we go:
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x301)
GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_AMD_draw_buffers_blend,

Pico

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Pico Geyer <picogeyer@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi damjan,
>
> Here we go:
> direct rendering: Yes
> OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x301)
> GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_AMD_draw_buffers_blend,
>
> Pico

You're using software rendering. No wonder it's slow.

What's your video card? Are the drivers installed?
How do you start gnome? startx? GDM?