gsf-office-thumbnailer

Marcin · 2017-09-13 19:35:29

I have been using Arch for 2 years and never had a problem like that. It started after last update. Normally when I open any application it consumes some RAM then when I close it RAM usage drops down. When I open Thunar and start browsing one particular catalogue (many libreoffice and pdf files) the fan gets noisy, CPU jumps up and memory usage as well. When I close it memory usage remains high. It is now over 4GB. I checked that with Tasks Manager. I found some tasks going on. Their names start from gsf-office-thumbneiler. Could not note full names as they kept moving on the screen. I have found some info about this gsf-office-thumbnailer:

gsf-office-thumbnailer is used internally by GNOME applications such as nautilus to generate thumbnails of several types of office application files. While it is possible to invoke it manually, it is usually invoked automatically by nautilus.

Is this a program/application or just a command?

I could not find any package named like that on my machine.

What does it do on my XFCE?

I have checked some "thumbnailer" posts but they were complaints about video files thumbnails not working with Nautilus.

Thank you for any advice.

V1del · 2017-09-13 20:55:01

pactree thunar

You will find tumbler which in turn will link against libgsf which in turn will provide you with thumbnails. And if you look a bit further you will find https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Th … o_much_CPU

Marcin · 2017-09-13 21:50:30

Sorry V1del. Your solution does not work.

Tumblerd, the service that watches the file system and notifies the system when a thumbnail needs to be made may get stuck in a loop, using 100% of the system's CPU,

If that would be an issue I should have it long time ago. The symptoms are similar however CPU does not use 100%. (say 27%). The main problem is with memory usage. And as I wrote it started after last system update I did last Sunday 10/09/17.

Anyway thank you for your time.

eschwartz · 2017-09-13 23:15:04

Perhaps you are instead dealing with FS#55532.

Marcin · 2017-09-14 08:45:58

Thank you Eschwartz for your advice.

New version of glibc has been released 2.26-4. My current version 2.26-3. I first tried to upgrade. Unfortunately it did not help.
Then I tried to downgrade to 2.25-7. Had to solve some dependencies (binutils and lib32-glibc). There was a moment it was behaving almost normally but when used Thunar again and opened the same folders my memory usage jumped up to 2,5 GB. After I closed Thunar my CPU calmed down but memory usage is stil 2,5 GB.

Sorry Eschwartz I think I am dealing with something else.

loqs · 2017-09-14 10:39:54

Marcin wrote:

After I closed Thunar my CPU calmed down but memory usage is stil 2,5 GB.

What have you done to investigate what is using the memory after thunar is closed?

Marcin · 2017-09-14 11:01:16

What have you done to investigate what is using the memory after thunar is closed?

I already mentioned that. Go to the top. It is Tasks Manager. It indicates task/processes consuming lots of RAM.

Have you got any other idea, please?

loqs · 2017-09-14 11:17:03

Marcin wrote:

It indicates task/processes consuming lots of RAM.

Something undefined is using a lot of memory and you have not been able to determine anything more than that?
Did you check the output of free to see if it was buff/cache? Or the output of top to see which process if any it was?
Edit:
fixed quoting.

Last edited by loqs (2017-09-14 11:17:47)

Marcin · 2017-09-14 12:25:14

[marcin@ARCH ~]$ free
total used free shared buf/cache available
Memory: 6096780 664704 4468372 649544 963704 4556400
Swap: 12287996 0 12287996

(quote above translated)

Both.

Moreover it happens when I browse libreoffice files. Thunar window also starts flickering when viewing libreoffice files icons followed by file names.

loqs · 2017-09-14 17:41:37

How do the results of free compare to before the issue occurs also have you examined the output of top as I suggested?

loqs wrote:

Or the output of top to see which process if any it was?

Code_of_conduct#Pasting_pictures_and_code

For non-English locale users: Please prepend LC_ALL=C to posted commands so that the output will be in English.

So you do not have to manually translate output.

Marcin wrote:

(quote above translated)

Marcin · 2017-09-14 19:35:44

Thank you for coming back.

It was Tumbler or actually Tumblerd. I decided to uninstall it. Thunar and Ristretto are only optionally depended on it.

Thunar still shows most of thumbnails except some (not all of them) .png files and video files. Ristretto shows alert about Tumbler missing and finding alternative thumbnailer. But it works OK with all the thumbnails displayed. (By the way I use Geeqie and Darktable).

This is not ideal solution. I lost a bit of functionality but got rid off that mad Thunar or rather Tumbler behaviour.
I checked some other posts and also XFCE forum. This is known issue reported for many years. There is also the solution for it on Arch Wiki suggested by V1del (.sh file) but it does not work for me. I was lucky having no problem with it for last 2 years.
What could possibly cause this problem in my case? Why did Tumbler start going mad? Is there any alternative and better thumbnailer for XFCE?

Thank you for non-English locale users tip.

PS. Perhaps I should consider using LTS kernel. I was successfully runing this OS for 2 years and perhaps I should start from the scratch again. I recently have issue every week.

Marcin · 2017-09-14 20:17:34

I have found Thunar plugin called thunar-thumbnailers. Have never been trying this before. I shall see if I can work without it first, then may try it out.

loqs · 2017-09-14 20:33:41

I would be more inclined towards Eschwartz suggestion in post #4 did you kill every running instance of gsf-office-thumbnailer before checking if memory had been reclaimed?

Arch Linux

#1 2017-09-13 19:35:29

gsf-office-thumbnailer

#2 2017-09-13 20:55:01

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#3 2017-09-13 21:50:30

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#4 2017-09-13 23:15:04

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#5 2017-09-14 08:45:58

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#6 2017-09-14 10:39:54

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#7 2017-09-14 11:01:16

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#8 2017-09-14 11:17:03

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#9 2017-09-14 12:25:14

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#10 2017-09-14 17:41:37

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#11 2017-09-14 19:35:44

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#12 2017-09-14 20:17:34

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

#13 2017-09-14 20:33:41

Re: gsf-office-thumbnailer

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