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Thunar becomes unresponsive with multiple windows
Status:
RESOLVED: WORKSFORME

Comments

Description Daniel Rusk 2007-10-12 13:30:28 CEST
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty)
Build Identifier: 

I am running Xubuntu 7.04, and whenever I open more than one window of Thunar it will start taking far longer to do much of anything than realistically nessiary... sometimes, it will take an indefinite amount of time... also, it will generally cause a massive processor drain.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open more than one window of Thunar.
2. Start browsing around in either window (preferably in different directories).
3. If step two does not demonstrate acceptible results try copying files between the windows.

Actual Results:  
Generally it doesn't take very long for Thunar to become completely unresponsive in either window... but sometimes Thunar will still be responsive, but will stop loading new folders, or simply will not move the file.

Expected Results:  
Well Windows can deal with this kind of thing without issue, and though I do not know any of the technical details involving Linux file systems, it would be desirable for this software to deal with it as well.
Comment 1 peroo 2007-11-02 23:52:05 CET
I can only agree. I also use Xubuntu 7.04. I'd call this bug's severity above medium! 
Comment 2 Markor 2007-12-06 05:39:08 CET
I am using Xubuntu Gutsy(7.10) amd64 and I have identical problem
with Thunar 0.8.
High cpu use, in junction with gam_server and strange behavior 
after even opening _one_ additional window.
Described here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunar/+bug/163587
Comment 3 Daniel Rusk 2007-12-07 18:33:47 CET
I have since upgraded to Xubuntu 7.10, and though works properly some of the time, the problem still persists, leading me to be more certen that this is a problem with Thunar and not with Xubuntu.
Comment 4 Sebastian Pipping 2007-12-18 22:18:33 CET
I have the same on Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10). This a serious showstopper. I therefore request to raise this bugs severity/priority level.
Comment 5 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-12-19 08:31:23 CET
Thunar doesn't care for the number of windows, and obviously, it has nothing to do with Windows or Linux. I have no real idea what's going wrong here, but as gamin was already mentioned... try removing the gam_server binary (i.e. temporarily move it to /tmp), killing any leftover gam_server process and see if this issue is still reproducible.
Comment 6 Daniel Rusk 2007-12-20 02:09:16 CET
Following your advice (to temperarily remove gam_server and kill any instances of it) I found multiple windowing to handle MUCH better, including copying between windows, but when, with multiple windows open, I tried to empty the trash bin, it froze up agian.
Comment 7 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-12-20 08:23:39 CET
Hm, so for some reason, gamin slows things down. This, however, seems to be an Ubuntu specific problem; maybe a broken gamin patch or a broken gamin configuration. CC'ing Jani.
Comment 8 Jani Monoses 2007-12-20 09:11:09 CET
I recall seeing this myself a while ago. 
Is this only happening when the sidepane is set to Tree? I see it with tree but not with shortcuts (Ctrl B and Ctrl T)
Comment 9 Daniel Pielmeier 2007-12-22 10:10:02 CET
(In reply to comment #7)
> Hm, so for some reason, gamin slows things down. This, however, seems to be an
> Ubuntu specific problem; maybe a broken gamin patch or a broken gamin
> configuration. CC'ing Jani.
> 

I experience the same problems on Gentoo (see http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2901) so it is not only related to ubuntu.
Comment 10 Daniel Pielmeier 2008-03-02 18:44:02 CET
I just want to inform you that this bug has been reproduced by benny@xfce.org the developer of thunar. He just lacks the amount of spare time to fix this, so it may take a while until this bug is resolved. Patches appreciated!
Comment 11 Christoph 2008-03-19 13:58:19 CET
(In reply to comment #10)
> I just want to inform you that this bug has been reproduced by benny@xfce.org
> the developer of thunar. He just lacks the amount of spare time to fix this, so
> it may take a while until this bug is resolved. Patches appreciated!

HIDDEN FILES?

HEY HO! After many weeks of suffering (never open more than 1 Thunar window!) I think i found a hint on where the problem might have it's evil root: 
Do all of you have "Show hidden files" activated? If I turn this off, I can easily open 10 Thunars, but the problem immediately reappears if I reactivate the hidden files option. 

Another idea: I have the impression that several people who report the same behaviour have foreign file systems mounted. I, for example, have both an ntfs and two fat32 partitions on my hard drive. 

Further description: When Thunar gets blocked, both gam-server and mount.ntfs are a bit busy (<10%, however) and top reports 80-95% of the cpu to be waiting for i/o to finish ("wa"). 

@Benny, I hope this helps you find the solution to a problem that annoys many people and has for sure driven away a good number of linux newbies! Thank you for investigating! 
Comment 12 Daniel Rusk 2008-03-20 03:17:58 CET
(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #10)
> > I just want to inform you that this bug has been reproduced by benny@xfce.org
> > the developer of thunar. He just lacks the amount of spare time to fix this, so
> > it may take a while until this bug is resolved. Patches appreciated!
> 
> HIDDEN FILES?
> 
> HEY HO! After many weeks of suffering (never open more than 1 Thunar window!) I
> think i found a hint on where the problem might have it's evil root: 
> Do all of you have "Show hidden files" activated? If I turn this off, I can
> easily open 10 Thunars, but the problem immediately reappears if I reactivate
> the hidden files option. 
> 
> Another idea: I have the impression that several people who report the same
> behaviour have foreign file systems mounted. I, for example, have both an ntfs
> and two fat32 partitions on my hard drive. 
> 
> Further description: When Thunar gets blocked, both gam-server and mount.ntfs
> are a bit busy (<10%, however) and top reports 80-95% of the cpu to be waiting
> for i/o to finish ("wa"). 
> 
> @Benny, I hope this helps you find the solution to a problem that annoys many
> people and has for sure driven away a good number of linux newbies! Thank you
> for investigating! 
> 

As said in comment #8, using shortcut mode instead of tree mode makes the glitch go away (for me anyways), whether having 'view hidden files' off will get rid of it too, I don't know, I admit that I don't consider it a viable option, but thats me. As for my file-systems mounted... I only have an ext3 and a linux-swap mounted, regardless, Thunar should be able to cope. I hope this information to be useful in trying to discover the cause.
Comment 13 Nick Schermer editbugs 2008-11-21 12:20:01 CET
There is a patch in bug 4051 that should improve the treeview. Please try it.
Comment 14 Nick Schermer editbugs 2012-09-26 16:33:35 CEST
Please reopen if this is still an issue with the latest Thunar release.

Bug #3602

Reported by:
Daniel Rusk
Reported on: 2007-10-12
Last modified on: 2012-09-26

People

Assignee:
Jannis Pohlmann
CC List:
5 users

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