CPU spikes on LUKS-encrypted btrfs home partition

English Open Chat
1

Hi all,

I couldn’t find a more suitable category, therefore posting here.

I have been facing some occasional but severe lag while running Insync (a Linux-friendly sync client for Google Drive and OneDrive).

I have opened a thread on their support forums as well:

I checked a bit more and according to top the major offenders are all kworkers, and they seem all related to btrfs to me.

I don’t think it’s normal, whatever the disk I/O a process could generate, that my PC slows down to the point of making the mouse cursor laggy and the audio crackle.

Does someone have any idea of what I could try?

For example a script that produces a lot of I/O to reproduce the same behavior without involving Insync, for starters. That would make it easier to compare with other users.

My / and /home are separate, but both are on btrfs, and /home is encrypted with LUKS (/ is not).

I’m running snapshot 20240114, with kernel 6.6.11-1-default

Thanks a lot in advance!

2

Update: it seems like it’s a behavior introduced by a recent update of that app.
The problem disappear when reverting to a previous version. I’ve informed the Insync support team of my findings.

1 Like