CPU goes to Max.

MichaelFinko

I have a low end Thinkpad and the poor processor seems to always end up maxing out with the fan on high all the time, yet I basically use browser based software (n - it's like I have some crypto miners in there somewhere! I saw a few other posts in these forums with similar issues but 'after Solus update...' but my issue has been happening over many updates (using Solus for a little over 2 years now).

These are the specs:

Solus 4.1 Fortitude / Gnome 3.36.5 / x11
Intel® Core™ i3-7100U CPU @ 2.40GHz × 4
Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2)
256 GB SSD
16GB Ram

Here's some more detail:

One of the 4 virtual cores will be on 100% for a while (per System Monitor graph, 'Resources'), then it switches to another one, and just keeps going around and around on basically 100% CPU usage. At first I though it was Firefox trashing my CPU, so than stopped using it and only used one browser (Brave) at a time. Sure, sometimes I might have 20 - 30 tabs open at a time, but I just had 7 open (4 different sites, Home Assistant and 3 of mine) and it was still occurring. Didn't have a single other program running. RAM is barely being used.

I found this similar issue on a Gnome forum https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/tracker/-/issues/95
except that my laptop does not stop working or crash, and is not slow. Just the CPU on max most of the time, which can't be good.

When I look at the 'Processes' tab in the System Monitor, and sort on 'CPU', at most it's being used about 25% by some 'Tracker' process called 'Tracker-Extract'. And when I sorted on the 'Name' column, I also found 'Tracker-miner-fs' and 'Tracker-store', which led me to think maybe a 'crypto-miner' got on my laptop somehow. Attached are pics of the these three processes

I use software from Tiki.org on all my sites, which happens to have databases that are called 'Trackers', but I don't believe it would have anything to do with this since that would all be cookie based, not system files

Any ideas?
Thanks,
Mike

JoshStrobl

Tracker is the local file indexer developed by GNOME, used to index local documents, audio, images, and video files for usage by apps like Nautilus (the file manager). It is known for being a resource hog even on good days.

You used to be able to pretty easily stop it in the tracker 2.x days, but haven't found a way to easily do that for tracker3.

Lucien_Lachance

JoshStrobl MichaelFinko
you need to sudo rm /usr/share/xdg/autostart/tracker*
and possibly sudo rm /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker*
and
sudo systemctl mask tracker-extract-3.service tracker-miner-fs-3.service tracker-writeback-3.service tracker-xdg-portal-3.service tracker-miner-fs-control-3.service

AND
systemctl --user mask tracker-extract-3.service tracker-miner-fs-3.service tracker-writeback-3.service tracker-xdg-portal-3.service tracker-miner-fs-control-3.service

reboot

that seems to have permanently killed the beast here, until an update arrives and the autostarts are added again

MichaelFinko

Hi Josh,

thanks for your quick reply!
I tried 'stopping', 'ending' and 'killing' but nothing works, it's an alien!
Ok, I guess I'll post on the Gnome forums to see if there are any plans to improve the situation on their end.

br,
Mike

Brucehankins

MichaelFinko try this, tracker reset --hard and see if that temporarily fixes the CPU issues. If it does, you know the problem is with Tracker.

I had a similar issue, on Budgie DE, because of Firefox. I use a Gnome distro at work and had gnome-extensions enabled in Firefox, trakcer-miner and the others were hammering my CPU. Reset and everything was fine until a rebooted. Disabled the Firefox extension and all is good now.

MichaelFinko

Hi,
Something good changed in the last few updates (I guess up to about a month ago) and the fan on my laptop rarely turns on anymore again! Same workflow, just FireFox open (but with multiple Container Tabs open), mostly working on wiki pages or CodeCademy lessons (so no graphics/video editing, no IDE's open, etc.) - up to about a month ago the fan was always kicking in even with just this, but now it doesn't, so huge thanks for the very noticeable efficiency changes!
br,
Mike

riffer

At some point "Power Mode" showed up in Gnome power settings. Maybe that is it?

MichaelFinko

riffer

ok, sorry, I'm a total bonehead - completely forgot I changed the power settings from 'Balanced' to 'Power Saver' recently. This is in the regular 'Settings' menu. I usually don't change a lot of settings, but either it did show up recently (as you mention), or I just missed it before.
I really need to keep a 'change log' for myself! 🤣 😆 🤣