1772673 - TB uses > 25 % CPU since 8 hours, no change after restart with webrender on linux

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Ulf Zibis]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:100.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/100.0

Steps to reproduce:

Nothing special
Version 91.10.0 on Ubuntu Linux

Actual results:

TB is lazy responsive and uses 25 ... 50 % CPU since more than 12 hours
Profiler data yesterday: https://share.firefox.dev/3xgTXhq
Profiler data after 8 hours: https://share.firefox.dev/38TeMpW

Expected results:

When doing nothing, CPU usage should be below 2 %

Comment 1

[Ulf Zibis]

Maybe bug 1763729 could help a lot.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

It's a good time consider using beta - a linux user recently reported their performance issue was solved.

Comment 3

[Ulf Zibis]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #2)

It's a good time consider using beta - a linux user recently reported their performance issue was solved.

Thanks for the advice ... or maybe switch over to https://www.betterbird.eu/

Anyway, I want to add, that on my system, beside TB consumes 25 ... 50 % CPU, it also forces the root process Xorg to consume 15 % CPU. When I close TB, the usage of Xorg is gone.

Comment 4

[Ulf Zibis]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #2)

... - a linux user recently reported their performance issue was solved.

Can you please link to their report?

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Ulf Zibis from comment #4)

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #2)

... - a linux user recently reported their performance issue was solved.

Can you please link to their report?

Not quickly. But again, it didn't reproduce in version 102.

Comment 6

[Ulf Zibis]

Thanks Wayne !
Isn't it really frustrating, that such problems come and go and there is no evident understanding for the reason of such?
In other words, there must be some cause, which is not really known and fixed and can come in effect again at any time.

Comment 7

[Ulf Zibis]

I now have tried Betterbird 91.10.0-bb33 and Thunderbird 102.0b2.
Both show the same problem, and TB 102-beta consumes even more CPU, up to 65 % and 20 % for Xorg.

Please have a deeper look at this issue.

Comment 8

[Ulf Zibis]

There is a workaround for me:
gfx.webrender.force-disabled = true

Comment 9

[Rachel Martin]

Please profile the issue which is likely specific to your configuration or hardware: https://profiler.firefox.com/docs/#/

From the previous comment it appears to be an issue with webrender.

Comment 10

[Ulf Zibis]

(In reply to Rachel Martin from comment #9)

Please profile the issue ...

Didn't you notice the profiles in the bug description above ?

Comment 11

[Rachel Martin]

Attachment: webrender.png

Sorry we missed that. From the second link https://share.firefox.dev/38TeMpW after clicking on Renderer, it appears like 63% of the samples are taken in __memcpy_ssse3 which is called from some error reporting function viaduct_log_error. So it appears that on your system something is quite wrong with (web)rendering leading to lots of time spent in error logging.

The TB team really needs to analyse the profiling result more carefully and find a maintainer of the Mozilla platform (rendering) code who can determine what is going on here.

Comment 12

[Ulf Zibis]

(In reply to Rachel Martin from comment #11)

So it appears that on your system something is quite wrong with (web)rendering leading to lots of time spent in error logging.

Can you please explain what you mean by web-rendering? In other words, How can the web be involved in the rendering on my local machine?

Comment 13

[Ulf Zibis]

Because of this bug: https://launchpad.net/bugs/1950044
I have installed this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~savoury1/+archive/ubuntu/display?field.series_filter=focal
Maybe, this is the source for the current problem.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Lots of good references to webrender https://www.google.com/search?q=webrender

First and foremost it is a rendering library. It is replacing Mozilla's (Firefox's) classic rendering methods, including in Thunderbird

Comment 15

[Ulf Zibis]

I now discovered, that webrender is disabled by default in Firefox 101 on Ubuntu. So the question is, why it is enabled by default in Thunderbird.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Ulf Zibis from comment #15)

I now discovered, that webrender is disabled by default in Firefox 101 on Ubuntu. So the question is, why it is enabled by default in Thunderbird.

Please try Thunderbird 102.1.0 from https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ in approximately two weeks.
If the problem persists, then attach files to the bug report for firefox and Thunderbird for "copy text to clipboard" in help > more troubleshooting info.

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

webrender is known to work better in version 102.
If this still reproduces when using version 102, please provide a new performance profile

Comment 18

[Ulf Zibis]

Attachment: TB-Profiler Error.png

Version 102 is available now for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, see; https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
... and I have installed it.

Now I have up to 50 % CPU use, so there is no progress with this bug.
The more worse is, that the workaround from comment #8 help anymore.

Additionally, I'm no more able to profile the issue. I tried 10 times, but always get:

Comment 19

[Ulf Zibis]

And after little time I get "Waiting ..."

Comment 20

[Ulf Zibis]

Attachment: TB-Profiler waiting.png

Comment 21

[Ulf Zibis]

Attachment: Troubleshooting report

Comment 22

[Ulf Zibis]

Now I see, that the reason for the CPU consumption is again bug 1763729.
The switch from 91 to 102 caused the Gloda index to build again from scratch.
So I have to wait again approximately 5 days to see, if v 102 makes a difference regarding webrender.

Comment 23

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Or, you could turn off indexing temporarily and restart thunderbird

Comment 24

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Please use the instructions from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiling-thunderbird-performance

Comment 25

[Ulf Zibis]

Now I can see, that this bug seems solved. Great !
Also I don't experienced bug 777491 since 5 days. I will observe some days more.

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #24)

Please use the instructions from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiling-thunderbird-performance

As I have written above, it doesn't work anymore.

Comment 26

[Ulf Zibis]

With or without webrender disabled now there is no performance difference since V 102, but it is OK now for a Core 3 Duo 2,4 Ghz. I can live with that.