slowness of "any" operation

[nailgao]

Qubes OS version:

4.0.

Affected component(s):

any application, any process run on desktop

---

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

use your desktop for at least half an hour.
have a number of VMs open, ideally as many as your hardware memory allows you to.
have various applications running; maybe several browser windows, file managers, editors etc..

Expected behavior:

you move back and forth between applications, and smoothly proceed with whatever you are doing.

Actual behavior:

after you are past the first 10-15 minutes of your desktop session, it begins to take "long" to run any operation (mostly starting/running applications).
and after yet another while, it may take AGES to do so.
depending on at which timepoint of your desktop session you do it, the application opens in anywhere from 5 minutes to 15 minutes (and longer!). and this when you have a total of around 10 windows (or less) open on desktop.
so far this happens when you want to start an application from qubes menu on the panel, or else with firefox tabs, like in the issue #4120 that I posted.
yet there have been moments when no click on any spot of the desktop was responsive for long minutes, too.

General notes:

---

Related issues:

INTERESTING PHENOMENON:
have Qubes developers added any fixes for this problem in the most recent fedora -27 update?
after I updated fedora template today, my last two sessions, particularly my last session, unlike the previous ones severely affected by desktop freezes, have been considerably more pleasant in terms of speed and seamless procession between and within apps.

[andrewdavidwong]

Possible duplicate of #3639.

[andrewdavidwong]

Possible duplicate of #3639.

[nailgao]

just thought adding a detail may be relevant:
during the aforementioned long delays of operations, i.e. of launching applications, it doesn't help to click again and again on the respective application in the menu. though it sometimes gets started in the 5th or 10th click, this state makes it seem to me like it is unrelated to whether I click on it again or not.

[nailgao]

just thought adding a detail may be relevant:
during the aforementioned long delays of operations, i.e. of launching applications, it doesn't help to click again and again on the respective application in the menu. though it sometimes gets started in the 5th or 10th click, this state makes it seem to me like it is unrelated to whether I click on it again or not.

[manasb]

Not sure if this is related but since upgrading to R4.0, my whonix-gw and whonix-ws take an extremely long period of time before successfully launching any program - in this period of time disk is constantly accessed.

Launching whonix-ws and checking on top with the use of sudo xl console whonix-ws in dom0 shows the kswapd0 process consuming 100% CPU for a number of minutes before gradually reducing CPU usage to around 20% but not completely stopping. This kswapd problem was noticable on R3.2 but only sometimes and that too randomly - I did not have a reliable way of reproducing that behavior. Now, however, I am seeing this behavior everytime I start up my whonix-ws or whonix-gw TemplateVMs.

[manasb]

Not sure if this is related but since upgrading to R4.0, my whonix-gw and whonix-ws take an extremely long period of time before successfully launching any program - in this period of time disk is constantly accessed.

Launching whonix-ws and checking on top with the use of sudo xl console whonix-ws in dom0 shows the kswapd0 process consuming 100% CPU for a number of minutes before gradually reducing CPU usage to around 20% but not completely stopping. This kswapd problem was noticable on R3.2 but only sometimes and that too randomly - I did not have a reliable way of reproducing that behavior. Now, however, I am seeing this behavior everytime I start up my whonix-ws or whonix-gw TemplateVMs.

[t4777sd]

This sounds dumb, but are you sure each VM has enough memory and no where in the system is swapping?

[t4777sd]

This sounds dumb, but are you sure each VM has enough memory and no where in the system is swapping?

[manasb]

Checking with free shows over 1 GB of "available" RAM, so a shortage of RAM doesn't seem to be the cause in my case.

[manasb]

Checking with free shows over 1 GB of "available" RAM, so a shortage of RAM doesn't seem to be the cause in my case.

[nailgao]

@manasb, why do you NOT, if you are not sure -as you say- create a new issue for your problem?

don't you see that you break the communication flow of the issue that I created?

what attitude is this?

if it is too much work for you to fill in a new issue, maybe you should turn to other OSes that you will not have to do that!

[nailgao]

@manasb, why do you NOT, if you are not sure -as you say- create a new issue for your problem?

don't you see that you break the communication flow of the issue that I created?

what attitude is this?

if it is too much work for you to fill in a new issue, maybe you should turn to other OSes that you will not have to do that!

[nailgao]

@andrewdavidwong can you please -if technically possible- remove the latter posts that is not related to my issue? or ask the respective dude to delete and publish his issue elsewhere?
if everyone posted own issue under everyone else's issue, what kind of place would this platform become?

[nailgao]

@andrewdavidwong can you please -if technically possible- remove the latter posts that is not related to my issue? or ask the respective dude to delete and publish his issue elsewhere?
if everyone posted own issue under everyone else's issue, what kind of place would this platform become?

[nailgao]

also in connection with the issue #4120, the problem persists.

anon-whonix turned instantly unclickable while there were 2 tabs open.
other open apps such as the file manager and disk utility were not affected.

with these "instant freeze" problems of the desktop and in particular the browsers, qubes presents itself no more suitable for daily use. can you please solve these ASAP?

[nailgao]

also in connection with the issue #4120, the problem persists.

anon-whonix turned instantly unclickable while there were 2 tabs open.
other open apps such as the file manager and disk utility were not affected.

with these "instant freeze" problems of the desktop and in particular the browsers, qubes presents itself no more suitable for daily use. can you please solve these ASAP?

[andrewdavidwong]

@nailgao:

@manasb, why do you NOT, if you are not sure -as you say- create a new issue for your problem?

don't you see that you break the communication flow of the issue that I created?

what attitude is this?

if it is too much work for you to fill in a new issue, maybe you should turn to other OSes that you will not have to do that!

@andrewdavidwong can you please -if technically possible- remove the latter posts that is not related to my issue? or ask the respective dude to delete and publish his issue elsewhere?
if everyone posted own issue under everyone else's issue, what kind of place would this platform become?

It doesn't look like @manasb was (intentionally or unintentionally) issue-jacking. Rather, it looks like @manasb commented here because he had reason to believe that he might be having the same problem, which is understandable, given how broad this issue is. This is appropriate conduct, so his comments will not be deleted. Please don't lash out at others like this. Doing so runs contrary to the spirit of our Code of Conduct.

[andrewdavidwong]

@nailgao:

@manasb, why do you NOT, if you are not sure -as you say- create a new issue for your problem?

don't you see that you break the communication flow of the issue that I created?

what attitude is this?

if it is too much work for you to fill in a new issue, maybe you should turn to other OSes that you will not have to do that!

@andrewdavidwong can you please -if technically possible- remove the latter posts that is not related to my issue? or ask the respective dude to delete and publish his issue elsewhere?
if everyone posted own issue under everyone else's issue, what kind of place would this platform become?

It doesn't look like @manasb was (intentionally or unintentionally) issue-jacking. Rather, it looks like @manasb commented here because he had reason to believe that he might be having the same problem, which is understandable, given how broad this issue is. This is appropriate conduct, so his comments will not be deleted. Please don't lash out at others like this. Doing so runs contrary to the spirit of our Code of Conduct.