On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 10:08:52PM +0200, Donn wrote:
The thing : Inkscape 0.45 gets gradually slower and less responsive over a period of time.
My system : Old AMD Athlon 1Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, Ample drive space (IDE), Nvidia something or other card, Kubuntu Dapper.
The caveat : For some reason or other I have the very real (and seemingly unique) experience with GTK apps all running very slowly -- well the gui response makes them appear to be slow. Apps like Firefox and OOO and Gimp and wxPython stuff and Tomboy, etc, are all painful. Still, I am used to that basic sluggishness.
So, what's going on?
Your system specs and software load look very typical and similar to what many of the rest of us use, but we definitely don't see the symptoms you describe, so that is very atypical.
Most likely, there is a fundamental problem that has nothing to do with Inkscape, and Inkscape is just suffering more noticeably than other things. So, I doubt we'll be able to help you solve it, but maybe we can nudge you in the right direction. At least I can help give some tools that you can use to help get a better idea of what might be wrong.
First, a few of your questions are easy to answer, given that you're seeing the slowness with many different applications:
Am I running some processes or other apps that are known to interfere with Inkscape?
Likely no; we know of no processes that directly interfere with Inkscape on a Linux-based system. It is possible a process could be hogging resources, but that's not going to be Inkscape-specific; it'd affect everything.
Is it more of a GTK thing?
No, not if you also experience the issue with non-Gtk things like Firefox, wxPython, and OOO.
Is my AMD chip a known culprit?
Unlikely, but possible. I've run into one CPU hotplug bug on an AMD chip (caused a system crash) due to a buggy chip, and of course there are various known issues with the nvidia binary driver and various X11 level things, that crop up when you have some advanced nvidia features turned on. It's doubtful any of those problems would cause the behavior you're seeing, though.
Is my RAM bad perhaps?
Also unlikely but possible. You could check it by rebooting your computer and make sure your BIOS does a memory check on it, and then also run 'memcheck' (Ubuntu LiveCD's have this) to be sure.
How can I profile this so the stats are more useful to the coders of Inkscape?
Well, since you're experiencing similar issues with apps other than Inkscape, it's more likely due to something much lower level than Inkscape, and it's extremely unlikely we'd be able to give you much help, other than pointing you in a better direction.
There are basically four possibilities here: * Application level issue causing resource exhaustion * Xorg level issue * Kernel level issue * Hardware issue
First, open a terminal and run `top`. Press 'i' to ignore non-active processes. Watch the memory and CPU loads while you recreate the problem. Do you spot one process that is eating up all the memory or CPU (like consuming more than 20%?) Try doing a 'kill -9 $pid' on that process ID and see if the system returns to responsiveness. If so, then report the bug to whatever project maintains that application (or to KUbuntu). Other useful programs for investigation of processes are ps, pstree, etc.
Second, one thing that sometimes happens in a system with overloaded memory is that it switches to swap memory, which is actually using space from your hard drive. Hard drives are **much** slower than memory, so especially with an older, slower IDE drive (or a slow IO connector on your motherboard), it could cause a situation like you describe. One way to test if this is happening is to unmount your swap space, and then recreate the issue; instead of swapping, the OOM Killer ("Out Of Memory Killer") will get triggered. Note that this will probably lock up your system and terminate some programs (maybe all of them!) so be prepared for a massive crash and don't have any important work unsaved.
Third, look at the last 20-50 lines of /var/log/messages (and/or other log files in /var/log) to see if there are any unusual error messages, kernel BUGs, PANICs, services crashing, etc. etc. If you find something, trace it back to the first obvious error message. Then that is the clue that'll get you on the right track for troubleshooting.
Finally, if none of the above proves fruitful, it might be a hardware issue. In this case, I would start swapping out pieces of hardware one by one and try recreating the problem. Being systematic here is important, so just do one hardware change at a time. If memtest passes without issue, it's unlikely to be RAM, but if you have extra RAM handy, that would be an easy first thing to test, so you can rule it out. You might also want to give a good overview of your BIOS and anything it reports for anomalies - temperature, voltages, etc.
From here, as you discover error messages or problems, do searches via
google to find others reporting that same error message, or that have the same hardware. Look for commonalities with your system. Maybe it boils down to a driver issue, and you need to update or change a driver. Maybe it's a bug in the kernel, so a kernel upgrade will solve it. Maybe it's a BIOS issue, and you can install a hotfix from your motherboard manufacturer. Or something else...
Anyway, I hope this all helps. Like I said, my bet is that it's nothing particular to Inkscape, however if in diagnosing this you do find Inkscape is at fault (such as if Inkscape is the culprit that's consuming all your resources), then please let us know via the bug tracker. Be sure to check if someone else has reported it already. Attach snippets from log files, output from tools like 'ps aux'/'free'/'lspci', and any other info that might help in tracking it down.
Good luck, Bryce