Arch Linux

charlie

Member

Registered: 2013-09-18

Posts: 57

Gnome shell using permanently at least 20% CPU

Recently, when I just realized that the fan where permanently turning, I did a top to see what could have been the reason and saw that the gnome-shell process never uses less than 20% of the CPU.

This happens even if the only opened window is gnome terminal (with top running...).

Meanwhile when I switch to another tty with a console, the CPU load disappears.

Note: 'gnome-shell --version' gives 3.16.3.

I don't think this is normal but I don't know what to do.

Last edited by charlie (2015-07-06 10:35:17)

ms

Member

From: Bandung, Indonesia

Registered: 2010-07-28

Posts: 81

Website

Re: Gnome shell using permanently at least 20% CPU

If you want to track the cause, try methods below,

Open new terminal, execute

tail -f .xsession-errors

Open another tab or terminal, and execute,

sudo journalctl -xf

Install package iotop and open another tab or terminal, and execute,

sudo iotop

Wait and see output in each terminal. If you found something suspicious, search in the web or maybe post it in here.

If you want to try to fix this (probably, since I don't use Gnome),

• Log out from X

• Open tty (CTRL+ALT+F1)

• Login as root

• Kill all user active session.

  # loginctl terminate-user <username>

• Logout and login as user

• Move local config directories,

  $ mv .config .config.bak
  $ mv .local .local.bak
  $ mv .cache .cache.bak

• Logout from console, and switch back to X (CTRL-ALT-LeftArrow)

• Login to X again

I hope that fix it.

Last edited by ms (2015-07-06 19:27:24)

ooo

Member

Registered: 2013-04-10

Posts: 1,638

Re: Gnome shell using permanently at least 20% CPU

This may be obvious, but if you use any gnome-shell extensions try disabling them all in case some of them is buggy and causing the cpu load.

Gui||aume

Member

From: Québec, Canada

Registered: 2014-06-20

Posts: 5

Re: Gnome shell using permanently at least 20% CPU

Hi Charlie,

I had this problem with kernel-ck and nvidia-ck drivers. gnome-shell process was using 20-25% on my quad-core.

Revert to normal kernel and nvidia drivers solved the problem for me.

Update 1 : false alarm, still have the same problem , so it is not related to the ck kernel.

Update 2 : the bug was finally due to the pixel-saver extension when launching Spotify :  https://github.com/deadalnix/pixel-saver/issues/25

Last edited by Gui||aume (2015-08-07 12:46:21)