geany freezes 10 seconds when I save or edit coming from another app (ubuntu 20.10)

[JLuc]

This happens since i upgraded to Ubuntu 20.10 : quite often when i save the opened document, geany freezes about 10 seconds.

• This happens whether the file is long (several ko) or short (a couple of words)
• This happens whether saved on HD or SSD
• When i type something during the freeze, typed text appears later on screen, when geany wakes up.
• It doesnt prevent me of switching to another task. But i dont expect to have to do that when saving a text file so i rarely try to escape the freeze in such a way.
• When i save after typing only one or 2 letters, then the freeze is shorter : 0 to 1 second. Same when i copy'n'paste the same content. Hard to grasp when it does freeze a short or long time but it has been freezing since the begining of 20.10 and still does.
• When looking at htop display, i dont see a big surge in any process. "geany" and "Xorg vt2" are the heaviest process with 2 to 13% max

[Edit :]

• It also happens when i come back to geany edit work after being a while on some other application, even when i dont save at this moment.
• no such thing happens with gedit or any other app

In case it makes a difference : on Ubuntu 20.04 i think i had a swap partition whereas now on 20.10 i have a swapfile :
(/etc/fstab with /swapfile none swap sw 0 0 )

[elextr]

This is a recorded message, please always provide the version of Geany, Glib and GTK and the operating system and version you are using (see lines near the top of Help->Debug Messages).

Are you saving on the exact same file, filesystem, and partition as you did in 20.04 or has it been re-built or moved and what is the filesystem?

[JLuc]

Thanks for caring.
OS is Ubuntu 20.10 and help > Debug says :

00:22:24: GLib-GIO DEBUG	: _g_io_module_get_default: Found default implementation gvfs (GDaemonVfs) for ‘gio-vfs’
00:22:24: Geany INFO		: Geany 1.36, fr_FR.UTF-8
00:22:24: Geany INFO		: GTK 3.24.23, GLib 2.66.1
00:22:24: Geany INFO		: System data dir: /usr/share/geany

Only one plugin is active : "Export"
The physical HD and SSD are the same as before. All partitions are ext4 except boot/efi is vfat.
Here is the simplified /etc/fstab :

# SSD : 200Go,  sda1 and sda2 :
UUID=<short id>  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
UUID=<long id>     /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# HD : 2 To, sdb1 and sdb2 : 
UUID=<another long id>   /DATA 	ext4 defaults 0 2
UUID=<yet another long id> /PARTAGE 	ext4 defaults 0 2

The filesystem is organised slightly differently as before on Ubuntu 20.04 but i only remember some differences :

• there was another "PROFILE" partition on SSD for thunderbird datas and firefox profiles, and now there is no such specific partition
• SSD ext4 partition was sdb2 (now is sda2)
• /home was crypted and afaik it isnt now

All partition are at least half free

[elextr]

Are you using XWayland, if so try running Geany without X just purely Wayland with GDK_BACKEND=wayland geany.

[JLuc]

I'm not familiar with these configs and tools so I searched and found related tools and here are the results :

• xeyes shows moving eyes and xprop answers on geany window so i guess its XWayland.
• echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE returns x11
• pgrep Xorg returns 1158
• echo $DESKTOP_SESSION returns 'ubuntu'

About your hint to GDK_BACKEND=wayland geany :

• I opened a terminal and typed this on 1 line as cited (without the end point) and got an error.
• I typed it on 2 lines and geany launches but xeyes still "looks" at geany's window and echo $DESKTOP_SESSION still returns 'ubuntu' so i'm not sure anything changed... but as for now, during this testing session, it doesnt freeze anymore !

But when i launch another new terminal, "echo $GDK_BACKEND" returns an empty line. So in case i confirm there is no more issue, how would i automaticaly launch geany with GDK_BACKEND=wayland ?

[elextr]

I don't run Ubuntu itself, but its my understanding that you select X11 or Wayland at the login screen.

echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE returns x11

Suggests you chose X11 by default or deliberately.

I opened a terminal and typed this on 1 line as cited (without the end point) and got an error.

Would have been good to tell us the error, but given above its probably not important.

So if you are running with the "conventional" window system, and none of the other points you note seem relevant, and you say Geany isn't using lots of CPU, then its probably waiting for the system to tell it something, but I don't know what. Geany certainly works for others on Ubuntu 20.10 so something is unique about your setup.

Possibly you could run geany under the debugger and see where its hung, but I suspect that the system package may not have symbols, so it might not help, but try it if you can.

Any other suggestions welcome.

[JLuc]

[UPDATE] AMOF i tried various terminal commands to switch to wayland, but doing so, geany allways kept freezing. Sometime the freeze lasts 30s.
But now i've switched to wayland using ubuntu's main login page option, and now it's OK : no more freezes.

[WanWizard]

I can confirm this issue on Fedora 33, also runing Xorg. Fedora installs Geany 1.37.1.

You can force a refresh / unlock the freeze by pressing the Windows button, or pull down a Geany menu.

[WanWizard]

I can't reproduce it on Wayland, but unfortunately I need Xorg due to a requirement for VNC.

[elextr]

So far doesn't happen to any of the regular contributors AFAIK, but they may not be running the specific configuration that is problematic.

[michael-platzer]

I can confirm this bug on Arch Linux with GNOME 3.38.2 and 3.38.3. Downgrading to GNOME 3.38.1 resolves the issue.

Edit: Same as for @WanWizard, it only affects X11.

[leonidx86]

Can confirm. Random freezes for several seconds on GNOME (v3.38.3) with X11 if Geany window is maximized (#2665). Does not happen if the window is not maximized.
The issue is not present at all on GNOME with Wayland.

geany --version
geany 1.37.1 (built on 2021-01-05 with GTK 3.24.24, GLib 2.66.4)

[elextr]

It would seem that there is something about X11 and recent? Gnome versions and/or GTK versions. Those able to reproduce it should probably report it to Gnome as the component that @michael-platzer finds downgrading fixes (well one report and the others confirm).

Please post the report reference here for tracking.

Thanks for everyone for tracking it this far.