Yast causing temp PC lockups, 100% CPU theads, screen locks up, mouse doesn't move

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I’m using TW on an AMD Ryzen 7 MSI Bravo laptop with 16 cores and 40GB RAM and nvme system drive.

For the past few weeks after I boot up and log in a core CPU thread will run at max and will sometimes lockup my system for a minute or 2. “Lockup” means the mouse pointer doesn’t move and the screen is unresponsive. The 100% threads (active CPU core) will shift every 10 to 20 seconds. I’ve run some simple tests and when I close Yast the threads will go back to “normal” i.e. all cores idling at 0% to 5%. Sometimes it will take 5 to 30 seconds for Yast to close after I hit the close button.

Why is Yast causing this 100% max thread behavior? What logs do you need to see? How can I fix this?

I’m a Linux noob and have very very little knowledge of using the terminal.

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Why is Yast running immediately after login? That doesn’t happen here. Have you done something on your desktop to auto-start it?

Note that you failed to even mention what desktop environment you are using.

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I startup Yast so I can turn on the Snapshot app. Yast was in my Autostart list but I removed it. But I still need to turn on Yast every day to manage my snapshots.

My desktop is Gnome / Wayland / Dash2Panel.

Anyway to fix this issue of Yast overloading my system?

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I’m not a regular Gnome user, though I do occasionally experiment with it.

I would guess that the overload is due using Yast as a startup rather than manually starting it later. Maybe there’s a timing conflict between Yast and something else that runs during Gnome startup.

But I’m just guessing.

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If you wanted to look into the issue, the wiki indicates the following:
Y2DEBUG=1 strace -eopen -ostrace.log /usr/lib/YaST2/bin/y2base lan qt.

you of course dont want to run with strace constantly but maybe instead as a test start a wrapper script and let it run for few seconds clocking. Like, a script like this?:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
Y2DEBUG=1 strace -eopen -ostrace.log /usr/lib/YaST2/bin/y2base lan

Alternatively, I suppose you could do a similar thing and instead of debug, just hard code some sleep 30 before yast is run.

Hopefully someone can correct me if a better way to debug. I both never use Gnome and am unfamiliar with Yast. Just looking at:

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:YaST_debugging

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6

@invalid_user_name Maybe packagekit and friends… or tracker… I use neither.

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7

Disabling packagekit and discover6notifier in KDE provides significant RAM savings. With my 4GB of RAM these packages make the difference… I followed @hui advice. And I really have to thank him

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UPDATE: I turned off autostart for Yast but the problem is still there. I removed all my autostart items and the problem is still there.

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I did a few simple tests and looks like the problem is not tied to or confined to Yast. When the problem is happening the “gnome-system-monitor” process is using the highest amount of CPU, about 0.8% total (and about 60 MB of RAM). Seems small but my system keeps locking up. Frustrating.

I have 40 GB of RAM but only about 4-7 GB of RAM is being used when the problem is happening.

One core (out of 16 total) will be at 100% for 10-20 seconds, then switches to another core. This will continue for about 10 - 15 minutes (with periodic lockups) before it stops and my system goes back to normal.

Is there a way to identify the exact process PID that is causing a series of single cores to peg at 100%? Can the logs show which process is controlling which core(s) for a time period? And show what % of core is being used?

Maybe a command to log when a core gets used 100% capacity and which process is doing it?

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10

just throw off your packagekit. that was a mistake to keep it

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11

On which facts is this comment based?

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12

what reply you refer for ?

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13

Your comment…

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i experienced freeze mouse and abnormal activity caused by the running packagekit. after i remove them, my problems gone out.

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I’m using Gnome and based on some quick research, it looks like removing packagekit will mess up Gnome, so I better keep it. But I’m a noob. Comments from experts most appreciated.

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16

@invalid_user_name just disable the service(s) and mask it then…

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Based on my noob research disabling packagekit will cause Gnome to malfunction and that could mean I can’t use my computer to get my work done.

Are you saying that disabling packagekit will not effect Gnome functioning?

Also, how can I make sure that it’s actually packagekit that is causing one of my cores to peg at 100%? (and thus cause the big slowdowns I’m experiencing?)

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@invalid_user_name I run GNOME, first things I do are remove plymouth, disable packagekit and tracker stuff (which may be you issue…). My boot time is quick, happy to control package management, don’t need stuff indexed…

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  1. So you’re saying disabling packagekit does not cause you any Gnome problems? That sounds good.

  2. If I disable packagekit, can I still successfully run “sudo zypper dup”?

  3. What is “tracker stuff” and how do I disable it?

Please remember I’m a Linux noob and don’t know any Linux under-the-hood stuff.

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@invalid_user_name

  1. Nope
  2. Yes
  3. As my user (–user) disable and mask;
systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep tracker

tracker-extract-3.service                                             masked    disabled
tracker-miner-fs-3.service                                            masked    disabled
tracker-miner-fs-control-3.service                                    masked    disabled
tracker-writeback-3.service                                           masked    disabled
tracker-xdg-portal-3.service                                          masked    disabled

So, systemctl --user disable <some service> and then swap disable to mask and run again.

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