$ uname -a Linux harrier 5.12.11-300.fc34.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jun 16 15:47:58 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
As I sit here, my Lenovo T530 laptop is reporting packagekitd is taking anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of CPU, per 'top.' There is continuous disk activity. Nothing going on with the system other than Thunderbird e-mail and Chrome browser.
This seems to go on, with CPU percentage growing over time, and it rebooting cures this, but it comes back after the system has slept overnight (lid closed).
packagekit is gnome-packagekit-common-3.32.0-7.fc34.x86_64
On 21 Jun 2021, at 14:18, Tim Evans tkevans@tkevans.com wrote:
$ uname -a Linux harrier 5.12.11-300.fc34.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jun 16 15:47:58 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
As I sit here, my Lenovo T530 laptop is reporting packagekitd is taking anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of CPU, per 'top.' There is continuous disk activity. Nothing going on with the system other than Thunderbird e-mail and Chrome browser.
This seems to go on, with CPU percentage growing over time, and it rebooting cures this, but it comes back after the system has slept overnight (lid closed).
packagekit is gnome-packagekit-common-3.32.0-7.fc34.x86_64
What files is packagekitd accessing? I'd use lsof to look for what its doing.
lsof -p <pid-of-packagekitd>
Also if you do ps -afx are there any subprocesses of packagekitd? What are they doing?
Barry
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On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 7:18 AM Tim Evans tkevans@tkevans.com wrote:
$ uname -a Linux harrier 5.12.11-300.fc34.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jun 16 15:47:58 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
As I sit here, my Lenovo T530 laptop is reporting packagekitd is taking anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of CPU, per 'top.' There is continuous disk activity. Nothing going on with the system other than Thunderbird e-mail and Chrome browser.
This seems to go on, with CPU percentage growing over time, and it rebooting cures this, but it comes back after the system has slept overnight (lid closed).
PackageKit and dnf keep separate metadata in /var/cache and they update periodically. PackageKit seems to do this on login, but I've also noticed it trigger an update when I switch networks. And dnf is on a timer. Either of them can use a lot of cpu, it just depends on how much updating they need.
Recently I've been experimenting with cgroups to restrict the amount of cpu packagekit gets via the packagekit.service unit. i.e. this is a service unit specific restriction, not on all instances of packagekit. Thus it doesn't affect offline updates, where it can still use 100% cpu if need be. But, it's possible GNOME Software could be a bit slower since it uses packagekit, though I haven't noticed any ill effect so far.
$ sudo systemctl edit packagekit.service
Read the file that appears and insert these two lines where it says to:
[Service] CPUQuota=25%
Save it out, and when the unit restarts (logout and login or do the daemon-reload followed by service restart dance) you'll see packagekit uses this value as a maximum.
On 6/21/21 4:52 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
PackageKit and dnf keep separate metadata in /var/cache and they update periodically. PackageKit seems to do this on login, but I've also noticed it trigger an update when I switch networks. And dnf is on a timer. Either of them can use a lot of cpu, it just depends on how much updating they need.
Well, this raises the question of just whether packagekit is something everyone needs in the first place. I manage my systems with dnf and have never once opened the Gnome software manager thingie. Googling around, I find:
https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2019/02/14/packagekit-is-dead-long-live-well...
What's the benefit of letting packagekit chew up CPU here, even if I implement the limits Chris suggests?
On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 at 12:25, Tim Evans tkevans@tkevans.com wrote:
On 6/21/21 4:52 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
PackageKit and dnf keep separate metadata in /var/cache and they update periodically. PackageKit seems to do this on login, but I've also noticed it trigger an update when I switch networks. And dnf is on a timer. Either of them can use a lot of cpu, it just depends on how much updating they need.
Well, this raises the question of just whether packagekit is something everyone needs in the first place. I manage my systems with dnf and have never once opened the Gnome software manager thingie. Googling around, I find:
https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2019/02/14/packagekit-is-dead-long-live-well...
What's the benefit of letting packagekit chew up CPU here, even if I implement the limits Chris suggests?
Many of the younger linux users I encounter came to linux from Windows because a mission critical application requires linux. Some have only used the command line after Google told them to run "sudo <some_application_giving_access_denied>" resulting in a badly broken system with some user files owned by root or data saved in root's home directory. Ask for a directory listing and you get a file manager image. For this group, dnf is not an option. The Gnome software manager has the added advantages that it a) forces a reboot and b) offers flatpak versions of major applications. Because I work with this class of users, I try to stick with Gnome's GUI software manager, but I'm not always patient enough to let it grind away for long periods.
Before I retired my work included running afternoon practicals for 2-week workshops. Earlier workshops used systems set up in advance, but users struggled to get the software working when they returned to their home labs. The first two afternoons were devoted to linux command-line basics and applying those to install and configure the software on user's laptops. Unfortunately, such workshops can only reach a small number of users. There are online courses with similar content, but dropout rates are high, probably related to users struggling with the command-line. For in-person workshops we handled some problematic procedures using one-on-one instruction, then having the first learners become teachers for the remaining students. I think there is work underway to develop remote learning environments that have provisions for teaching assistant office hours and breakouts into small groups.
On 6/22/21 10:29 AM, George N. White III wrote:
The Gnome software manager has the added advantages that it a) forces a reboot and b) offers flatpak versions of major applications.
The forced reboot is only an advantage if some of the upgrades require a reboot to get them started. Most upgrades only need to have their package restarted, and that only if it was running when the upgrade occurs. This is what needs-restarting is for, but if you don't know how to use dnf (and don't want to) it's not going to do you any good. And, for that matter, what do people like that do if they're not set up with Gnome? My personal opinion is that people like that should be using Ubuntu, as that distro is specifically designed for Windows refugees. (I've set two people up with Linux because they wanted to get away from Windows, and both of them are happily running Xubuntu.)
Sorry for ranting, but forced reboots are a pet peeve of mine and you just petted it.
On Tue, 2021-06-22 at 13:29 -0300, George N. White III wrote:
Many of the younger linux users I encounter came to linux from Windows because a mission critical application requires linux. Some have only used the command line after Google told them to run "sudo <some_application_giving_access_denied>" resulting in a badly broken system with some user files owned by root or data saved in root's home directory.
The crabby me wonders whether such people ever grasp using a computer without breaking it? Long ago I gave up helping such users by no- longer continually fixing their broken Windows, those people never got it. I liken it to be asked to unblock their sewers with bare hands.
For me, giving semi-clueless users a copy and paste command line solution has had far more predictable results than trying to talk them through the steps to use any graphical system. It's painful trying to tell them to do some step, wait while they describe something that else that they've done instead of what you told them to do, try to figure out what they've really done, and try again... Stop clicking on random things trying to see if that'll magically make things work and actually just do *only* what I say...
See that thing called mouse prefs, click on it. I can't see it, what if I do this (unrelated thing), instead? No, stop clicking on things, just read through all the options, not out loud to me, I don't want to know everything on the computer, I want you to find the mouse preferences icon in the window. I can't find it.... Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo (channelling Luke Skywalker).
It shouldn't take 45 minutes of talking over the phone just to open the damn mouse preferences. Never mind actually change any settings.
Have you still got the box? Yes. Unplug the computer and put it back in it.
These are the same kind of people that'd dump all the books in the library in a random pile on the floor because they can't understand how to use a shelving system.
Gawd help us if the clueless would like to practice first aid, despite all evidence to the contrary that they're not competent to do so.
On Tue, Jun 22, 2021, at 10:23 AM, Tim Evans wrote:
On 6/21/21 4:52 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
PackageKit and dnf keep separate metadata in /var/cache and they update periodically. PackageKit seems to do this on login, but I've also noticed it trigger an update when I switch networks. And dnf is on a timer. Either of them can use a lot of cpu, it just depends on how much updating they need.
Well, this raises the question of just whether packagekit is something everyone needs in the first place. I manage my systems with dnf and have never once opened the Gnome software manager thingie. Googling around, I find:
I don't know a lot about Packagekit, or anything else really. But I will take this chance to complain again. When rebooting or shutting down my laptop, many times the process is delayed (up to 1.5 minutes) and it displays its waiting for a Packagekit job to finish. Thats really annoying and I have not suffered from anything similar on Linux before. Just saying, if anyone knows of a solution for this, Im all ears.
thanks,
On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 at 14:00, Joe Zeff joe@zeff.us wrote:
On 6/22/21 10:29 AM, George N. White III wrote:
The Gnome software manager has the added advantages that it a) forces a reboot and b) offers flatpak versions of major applications.
The forced reboot is only an advantage if some of the upgrades require a reboot to get them started. Most upgrades only need to have their package restarted, and that only if it was running when the upgrade occurs. This is what needs-restarting is for, but if you don't know how to use dnf (and don't want to) it's not going to do you any good. And, for that matter, what do people like that do if they're not set up with Gnome? My personal opinion is that people like that should be using Ubuntu, as that distro is specifically designed for Windows refugees. (I've set two people up with Linux because they wanted to get away from Windows, and both of them are happily running Xubuntu.)
The forums for some of the mission critical applications have seen cases where users were told to install an updated distro package. User then reports that the update had no effect (because the old library is still being used) and proceeds to run wild reinstalling the OS from scratch, etc. Forums get blamed for recommending updates that trashed the users system.
Among my colleagues, Ubuntu and derivative distros are very widely used, especially outside N. America. Many of the sites that use Fedora do so because the heavy lifting is done on RHEL or derivative rpm-based distros and HPC hardware.
Sorry for ranting, but forced reboots are a pet peeve of mine and you just petted it.
As long as the Gnome software manager doesn't get in the way of doing updates with DNF, you should be able to leave it to the users who insist on doing everything with GUI's.
When dealing with armies of "untrained" users, we need simple default updating workflows, even at a cost of users' time. Requiring a reboot simplifies troubleshooting and minimizes opportunities for misguided and unrecoverable user problem solving.
On 6/22/21 12:57 PM, George N. White III wrote:
As long as the Gnome software manager doesn't get in the way of doing updates with DNF, you should be able to leave it to the users who insist on doing everything with GUI's.
*Shrug!* If they really want to do everything through a point and drool interface, that's their business. I would hope, however, that the people infesting this mailing list were more knowledgeable than that, and that's the audience I'm posting to.
When dealing with armies of "untrained" users, we need simple default updating workflows, even at a cost of users' time. Requiring a reboot simplifies troubleshooting and minimizes opportunities for misguided and unrecoverable user problem solving.
And that's why I suggest some form of Ubuntu to people like that. It does what they need in a way they can understand and if anything goes wrong I can point them to the official Ubuntu forums. (Well, except for my sister as we share a house.)
On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 14:29:33 -0600 Joe Zeff wrote:
And that's why I suggest some form of Ubuntu to people like that.
I use ubuntu on the little computer I have running my 3D printer so I can run the LTS release and not worry about upgrading every 6 months. I just had a problem with the latest kernel and wanted to remove the most recent installed kernel. If there was some fancy GUI way to do that I sure couldn't find it. Took hours of google searches to get rid of it.
Tim:
Long ago I gave up helping such users by no- longer continually fixing their broken Windows...
Joe Zeff:
"Sorry, I don't do Windows."
Exactly!
I still get asked if I can recommend anti-virus software, and I reply that I haven't touched Windows in years, I don't need it on my computers, so I've no info on current anti-virus software.
On Tue, 2021-06-22 at 12:24 -0500, Anil Felipe Duggirala wrote:
I don't know a lot about Packagekit, or anything else really. But I will take this chance to complain again. When rebooting or shutting down my laptop, many times the process is delayed (up to 1.5 minutes) and it displays its waiting for a Packagekit job to finish. Thats really annoying and I have not suffered from anything similar on Linux before. Just saying, if anyone knows of a solution for this, Im all ears.
You can: Remove/disable package kit. Do manual updates when you feel like it. Reboot when you want to.
That's what I do. The last thing I want is several minutes of waiting around for the computer to shutdown or startup when I don't want to be waiting around. I'll do updates when I've got free time to waste.
George N. White III:
The forums for some of the mission critical applications have seen cases where users were told to install an updated distro package. User then reports that the update had no effect (because the old library is still being used) and proceeds to run wild reinstalling the OS from scratch, etc. Forums get blamed for recommending updates that trashed the users system.
And that's fair blame, if half-arsed advice is given. And it's not that hard to advise that they may need to reboot, too.
One of my peeves about Ubuntu (years ago, but may still apply), was that their forums were full of Windows escapees, still carrying on in the same way. Not knowing what they were doing, yet giving (bad) cargo cult advice, and carrying on in a Windows manner.
For a lot of their users I saw no reason why they should have left Windows. Many still wanted to run Windows apps. The reinstall and reboot mantra was still going on. As well as the attitude of - just try adding yet more stuff, randomly without knowing what you're doing, in the hope that it'll solve your problem. And there was still a general acceptance that it was okay for computers to crash and work in crazy ways.
I only used Windows for a short while, I'd used better before, and knew that it's a bad OS. I didn't want to carry on using it, nor something else just as bad. I saw Ubuntu as no real improvement. The OS wasn't that great, and the user support was worse.
On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 10:58 AM Joe Zeff joe@zeff.us wrote:
On 6/22/21 10:29 AM, George N. White III wrote:
The Gnome software manager has the added advantages that it a) forces a reboot and b) offers flatpak versions of major applications.
The forced reboot is only an advantage if some of the upgrades require a reboot to get them started. Most upgrades only need to have their package restarted, and that only if it was running when the upgrade occurs. This is what needs-restarting is for, but if you don't know how to use dnf (and don't want to) it's not going to do you any good. And, for that matter, what do people like that do if they're not set up with Gnome? My personal opinion is that people like that should be using Ubuntu, as that distro is specifically designed for Windows refugees. (I've set two people up with Linux because they wanted to get away from Windows, and both of them are happily running Xubuntu.)
Sorry for ranting, but forced reboots are a pet peeve of mine and you just petted it.
https://lwn.net/Articles/702629/
Kindof an old argument at this point. One of the things I'm curious about right now: https://pagure.io/libdnf-plugin-txnupd https://kubic.opensuse.org/documentation/transactional-update-guide/transact...
It's a more sophisticated variation on on I came up with by (rw) snapshotting the 'root' subvolume, mounting it, and using chroot to do a full system update (and upgrade). It's an out of band or side car update. No reboot to a special environment. If it goes wrong, just delete it. If there's a crash or power fail, you still boot the untouched current root. Only once it completes, and optionally passes some tests, would the root be switched to the updated snapshot, and reboot. And the user can choose when that happens.
On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 11:24 AM Anil Felipe Duggirala anilduggirala@fastmail.fm wrote:
I don't know a lot about Packagekit, or anything else really. But I will take this chance to complain again. When rebooting or shutting down my laptop, many times the process is delayed (up to 1.5 minutes) and it displays its waiting for a Packagekit job to finish. Thats really annoying and I have not suffered from anything similar on Linux before. Just saying, if anyone knows of a solution for this, Im all ears.
It is annoying, and a known problem. I'm not sure if it's given a quit or terminate signal at shutdown, but it's become sufficiently busy that it ignores it. And then systemd hits a time out 1m30s later and kills it anyway. There is a Workstation ticket about shortening shutdown times.
https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/163
On 6/22/21 9:59 PM, Tim via users wrote:
One of my peeves about Ubuntu (years ago, but may still apply), was that their forums were full of Windows escapees, still carrying on in the same way. Not knowing what they were doing, yet giving (bad) cargo cult advice, and carrying on in a Windows manner.
Last time I looked, they still thought that if a version had reached EOL and was no longer supported that it meant that they weren't allowed to give you any assistance other than to tell you to upgrade to a supported version.
On Tue, 2021-06-22 at 22:34 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 10:58 AM Joe Zeff joe@zeff.us wrote:
On 6/22/21 10:29 AM, George N. White III wrote:
The Gnome software manager has the added advantages that it a) forces a reboot and b) offers flatpak versions of major applications.
The forced reboot is only an advantage if some of the upgrades require a reboot to get them started. Most upgrades only need to have their package restarted, and that only if it was running when the upgrade occurs. This is what needs-restarting is for, but if you don't know how to use dnf (and don't want to) it's not going to do you any good. And, for that matter, what do people like that do if they're not set up with Gnome? My personal opinion is that people like that should be using Ubuntu, as that distro is specifically designed for Windows refugees. (I've set two people up with Linux because they wanted to get away from Windows, and both of them are happily running Xubuntu.)
Sorry for ranting, but forced reboots are a pet peeve of mine and you just petted it.
https://lwn.net/Articles/702629/
Kindof an old argument at this point. One of the things I'm curious about right now: https://pagure.io/libdnf-plugin-txnupd https://kubic.opensuse.org/documentation/transactional-update-guide/transact...
It's a more sophisticated variation on on I came up with by (rw) snapshotting the 'root' subvolume, mounting it, and using chroot to do a full system update (and upgrade). It's an out of band or side car update. No reboot to a special environment. If it goes wrong, just delete it. If there's a crash or power fail, you still boot the untouched current root. Only once it completes, and optionally passes some tests, would the root be switched to the updated snapshot, and reboot. And the user can choose when that happens.
Interesting. That sounds superficially similar to Android's A/B system update method. Is there work being done on getting this into Fedora?
poc
On 6/22/21 11:44 PM, Tim via users wrote:
You can: Remove/disable package kit. Do manual updates when you feel like it. Reboot when you want to.
That's what I do. The last thing I want is several minutes of waiting around for the computer to shutdown or startup when I don't want to be waiting around. I'll do updates when I've got free time to waste.
Which is what I (the OP) asked about, and have now done. I don't use the Gnome software application for anything, so have disabled its underlying packagekit.
It's irrelevant now for me, but I will note that this runaway CPU-usage thing has just come up in the past week or 10 days, so wonder if something has changed in packagekit?
And, FWIW, I fought and lost my first UNIX/Windows battle 30 years ago. sorry to have crossed into this No Man's Land once again...
On 6/23/21 5:43 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
It's a more sophisticated variation on on I came up with by (rw) snapshotting the 'root' subvolume, mounting it, and using chroot to do a full system update (and upgrade). It's an out of band or side car update. No reboot to a special environment. If it goes wrong, just delete it. If there's a crash or power fail, you still boot the untouched current root. Only once it completes, and optionally passes some tests, would the root be switched to the updated snapshot, and reboot. And the user can choose when that happens.
Interesting. That sounds superficially similar to Android's A/B system update method. Is there work being done on getting this into Fedora?
Sounds like Sun's Live Update, circa 2002.
On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 at 14:05, Tim via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, 2021-06-22 at 13:29 -0300, George N. White III wrote:
Many of the younger linux users I encounter came to linux from Windows because a mission critical application requires linux. Some have only used the command line after Google told them to run "sudo <some_application_giving_access_denied>" resulting in a badly broken system with some user files owned by root or data saved in root's home directory.
The crabby me wonders whether such people ever grasp using a computer without breaking it? Long ago I gave up helping such users by no- longer continually fixing their broken Windows, those people never got it. I liken it to be asked to unblock their sewers with bare hands.
For me, giving semi-clueless users a copy and paste command line solution has had far more predictable results than trying to talk them through the steps to use any graphical system. It's painful trying to tell them to do some step, wait while they describe something that else that they've done instead of what you told them to do, try to figure out what they've really done, and try again... Stop clicking on random things trying to see if that'll magically make things work and actually just do *only* what I say...
Thinking over a number of recent posts on a European Space Agency forum, there appears to be a class of users who never learned to be careful about details when entering text. They live in a place where they never have to enter information, only select options from a multiple choice list.
I have often encountered users running a the same program on 100's of input files. I show them how to use a for loop in bash, but as soon as I leave the room they are using a editor to create a script with one line for each file. Now GUI's are being created to run a loop on a list of filenames selected using a GUI.
See that thing called mouse prefs, click on it. I can't see it, what if I do this (unrelated thing), instead? No, stop clicking on things, just read through all the options, not out loud to me, I don't want to know everything on the computer, I want you to find the mouse preferences icon in the window. I can't find it.... Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo (channelling Luke Skywalker).
It shouldn't take 45 minutes of talking over the phone just to open the damn mouse preferences. Never mind actually change any settings.
Have you still got the box? Yes. Unplug the computer and put it back in it.
These are the same kind of people that'd dump all the books in the library in a random pile on the floor because they can't understand how to use a shelving system.
Gawd help us if the clueless would like to practice first aid, despite all evidence to the contrary that they're not competent to do so.
Many large organizations now provide a Windows PC to every employee. Linux lives in the data center. Windows is used for purchase and travel requests, and mandatory training apps for things like health and safety, live shooter response, data retention policies, etc.
There is a school of business administration that says the key to a successful business is to design processes that can be used by people who have no marketable skills or interest in doing good work, so have few other options and will work for minimum wage.
On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 13:14:56 +0930 Tim via users wrote:
Remove/disable package kit. Do manual updates when you feel like it.
Also, without the automagic background pakagekit nonsense running, you can run dnf exactly when you want to rather than discovering that packagekit has the updates locked while it is downloading stuff. It seems to have the uncanny ability to do this at the most inconvenient possible time :-).
On Wed, 2021-06-23 at 09:54 -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
Also, without the automagic background pakagekit nonsense running, you can run dnf exactly when you want to rather than discovering that packagekit has the updates locked while it is downloading stuff. It seems to have the uncanny ability to do this at the most inconvenient possible time :-).
Yes, that was my impetus to kill it rather than just ignore it.
On Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 3:44 AM Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
Interesting. That sounds superficially similar to Android's A/B system update method. Is there work being done on getting this into Fedora?
Folks are looking at multiple ways of doing it. All options imply some kind of layout change, and we need to consider upgrades. It has to work for dnf and PackageKit, etc.
-- Chris Murphy
On Sun, 2021-06-27 at 12:33 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 3:44 AM Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan@gmail.com wrote:
Interesting. That sounds superficially similar to Android's A/B system update method. Is there work being done on getting this into Fedora?
Folks are looking at multiple ways of doing it. All options imply some kind of layout change, and we need to consider upgrades. It has to work for dnf and PackageKit, etc.
Thanks.
poc
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Anil Felipe Duggirala -
Barry Scott -
Chris Murphy -
George N. White III -
Joe Zeff -
Patrick O'Callaghan -
Tim -
Tim Evans -
Tom Horsley