KDE 4.3 X and plasma-desktop CUP usage

[Emmett Culley]

On 09/03/2009 01:50 AM, Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Wednesday 02 September 2009 20:09:43 Emmett Culley wrote:
>> On 09/01/2009 10:24 AM, Emmett Culley wrote:
>>> Since upgrading to KDE 4.3 on Fedora 11 I have noticed that  X CPU usage
>>> gets up to 99% of CPU usage and plasma-desktop stays around 20% CUP
>>> usage.  If I shut everything down on the desktop the usage for both
>>> remains at 80 - 99% and 15- 20%.  If I end the session (ctl-alt
>>> backspace) both X and plasma-desktop drop off to nil CPU usage.
>>>
>>> Upon restart of KDE CPU usage for X and plasma-desktop is sometimes
>>> normal (low) after the system settles, and some times not.  But in all
>>> cases, after some time the CPU usage for X and plasma-desktop climb back
>>> up to 80 to 90% for X and 15 to 25% for plasma-desktop.
>>>
>>> Anybody else seeing this?
>>>
>
>> After more experimenting I've found the following:
>>
>> Each time I reboot my system, CPU usage for plasma-desktop and X is high
>> (as described above).
>>
>> If I log out (via the Leave menu) and log back in, the high CPU usages
>> remains the same.
>>
>> If I kill X (ctl-alt backspace) then log back in, the desktop comes back up
>> with "normal" CPU usage for both, and it stays that way.
>>
>> I have four CPU cores (two dual core Opterons), so the CPU usage is almost
>> unnoticeable in the UI.  The UI is just sluggish enough to be noticeable.
>> But, it wasn't until I noticed consistently high CPU usage in Gkrellm that
>> I began to investigate.
>>
> Of course your problem may be entirely different, but every time gkrellm shows
> me this runaway behaviour I open top.  Without fail it is either firefox,
> thunderbird or nspluginviewer.  Killing those invariably stops the problem.
>
> Anne
>
>
In this case the X and plasma-desktop CPU usage increase happens immediately after the desktop comes up.  Before any applications except Kontact and Gkrellm.  When I close those two apps top still shows X CPU usage at 80-99% and plasma-desktop usage at 18-25%.

Only hitting ctl-alt backspace and re-logging in stops that excessive CPU usage by those to processes.

Emmett