xfce4-mailwatch-plugin pegging the CPU usage meter.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2008-10-16, Brian J. Tarricone <bjt23 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>
>> The odd thing I've noticed is that the xfce4-mailwatch-plugins
>> completely peg the CPU usage at 100% for 8-10 seconds each time
>> it checks the IMAP mailboxes.  I'm running an AMD Athlon 64
>> 3200+ clocked at 2GHz, and it just shouldn't take that many
>> clock cycles to check an IMAP mailbox.
>> 
>> AFAICT, the each instance of the mailwatch plugin will suck up
>> as much CPU as it can the whole time it's "awake".
>> 
>> Any ideas on what might be wrong?
>
> Nothing.  AFAIK that's normal.

That's normal?  What is it doing for 8-10 seconds at 2GHz?
That's an _awful_ lot of processing for something that should
be spending all it's time blocked waiting for network I/O.

> Does it on my system too (tho mine's a bit slower than yours).
> If you really care that much, profile it with sysprof or
> callgrind or something and tell me where it's spending too 
> much time.

Something seems broken to me.  It shouldn't take that much CPU
to send a few IMAP commands and parse the replies.  Even
setting up an SSL connection only takes a fraction of a second
of CPU time at 2GHz.  To me, it looks like the program is
busy-waiting on something when it should be blocking.

> (Sysprof would be nice; I can't do it myself since sysprof is
> x86-only.  Tho callgrind would probably give a log that's
> easier to send.)

I'll give it a try.

-- 
Grant