bringing up *any* browser cripples system performance

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 6 Apr 2014, Philip Rhoades wrote:

> Robert,
>
>
> On 2014-04-06 20:24, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > (note: i'm starting a new thread for this since my original post
> > blaming firefox for system slowdown now seems inaccurate. the problem
> > appears to be more widespread.)
> >
> >   the system: an asus g74s, quad-core i7 with 16G of RAM, so i'm
> > fairly confident that physical limitations aren't the problem. to
> > establish a baseline, i'm in gnome 3 with only a couple terminal
> > windows open, no browser. performance is snappy -- when i move the USB
> > mouse, the cursor moves appropriately, nice and crisp. and "top" shows
> > Xorg puttering along, using in the neighbourhood of 5-10%. all in all,
> > everything working just fine. oh, using the
> > 3.15.0-0.rc0.git9.1.fc21.x86_64 kernel as well.
> >
> >   now i start a single instance of epiphany, and i have a single tab
> > open on a page of my web site wiki which contains nothing but text --
> > that is, no gifs, no video, nothing like that. performance still seems
> > fine, but now i go to simply move the epiphany browser window and
> > response just plummets. simply dragging the browser window to a
> > slightly different location is painfully slow and jerky, and Xorg CPU
> > usage jumps to 50%. as soon as the move is over, Xorg CPU usage drops
> > back to normal.
> >
> >   slightly different experiment -- just try to resize the browser
> > window by dragging a corner, again horribly slow and Xorg usage
> > briefly jumps to 88%. in fact, just moving the cursor *across* the
> > browser window causes it to slow horribly. and i tried this from a
> > throwaway guest account, same symptoms. (all of this matches what i
> > saw with firefox, which is why i switched browsers, but i see exactly
> > the same problems.)
> >
> >   and trying to watch a youtube video is practically futile. i opened
> > up a second epiphany tab and popped over to
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bXSeheZLq8. interestingly, while audio
> > seems fine, i'm lucky to get one or two frames per second, the video
> > is that erratic. and while the video is playing, Xorg is up around 90%
> > CPU usage and keyboard response while typing this has a massive time
> > lag.
> >
> >   this system has an nvidia chipset, and here's the relevant
> > nouveau-related "lsmod" output:
> >
> > $ lsmod | grep nouveau
> > nouveau              1178761  3
> > mxm_wmi                12865  1 nouveau
> > i2c_algo_bit           13257  1 nouveau
> > drm_kms_helper         50413  1 nouveau
> > ttm                    85373  1 nouveau
> > drm                   288814  5 ttm,drm_kms_helper,nouveau
> > i2c_core               38734  6
> > drm,i2c_i801,drm_kms_helper,i2c_algo_bit,nouveau,videodev
> > wmi                    18804  3 mxm_wmi,nouveau,asus_wmi
> > video                  19456  2 nouveau,asus_wmi
> > $
> >
> >   i have to think this is something related to nouveau since nothing
> > else seems to explain it. is there some kind of gnome setting i can
> > play with to see if that helps? i'm open to suggestions.
>
>
> Try changing to a XFCE desktop and see what happens . .

  just tried that, same symptoms but i also got the following selinux
diagnostic when i logged in with xfce:

===== start diagnostic =====

SELinux is preventing /usr/lib64/tumbler-1/tumblerd from write access
on the fifo_file .

*****  Plugin leaks (86.2 confidence) suggests
*****************************

If you want to ignore tumblerd trying to write access the  fifo_file,
because you believe it should not need this access.
Then you should report this as a bug.
You can generate a local policy module to dontaudit this access.
Do
# grep /usr/lib64/tumbler-1/tumblerd /var/log/audit/audit.log |
audit2allow -D -M mypol
# semodule -i mypol.pp

*****  Plugin catchall (14.7 confidence) suggests
**************************

If you believe that tumblerd should be allowed write access on the
fifo_file by default.
Then you should report this as a bug.
You can generate a local policy module to allow this access.
Do
allow this access for now by executing:
# grep tumblerd /var/log/audit/audit.log | audit2allow -M mypol
# semodule -i mypol.pp

===== snip ... =====

  i'm about to wander off to bugzilla to check this out, i have no
idea what tumblerd is.

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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