Re: Since update slowdown Kontact
Hi Merlin.
MERLIN Philippe - 29.05.20, 14:57:26 CEST:
> Since update Kontact 5.14.1 (20.04.0) , since the update the access
> and reading of the received messages is often very slow a message
> appears "Reception of the content of the message please wait" Same
> problem for the trashing of messages.
> Do you have the same problem?
I do have this issue with KMail while Akonadi synchronizes a maildir
folder.
Even for little folders this appears to take much longer than before. 100%
of CPU usage (well… not quite exactly but read on) on one CPUs for minutes
for a folder with just 33000 messages.
If I read the numbers atop is telling me in
CPU | sys 4% | user 111% | irq 0% | idle 285% | wait 0% | guest 0% | ipc 0.08 | cycl 911MHz | curf 2.98GHz | curscal 92% |
cpu | sys 0% | user 100% | irq 0% | idle 0% | cpu003 w 0% | guest 0% | ipc 0.02 | cycl 3.10GHz | curf 2.94GHz | curscal 91% |
correctly (see manpage about ipc and cycl there), then that is mostly the CPU
being stalled while accessing memory. I straced it and it *polled* a lot on
some file descriptor. As far as I remember it was this one:
"6 -> 'anon_inode:[eventfd]'".
Interestingly enough, if I stop the "akonadi_maildir_resource" process by
sending it SIGTERM, then KMail almost instantly responds again.
This points back to the one issue in Akonadi that after all the time is still
not fixed: It can only do one thing at a time. You read that right: It can
only do one thing at a time. That means: Long term tasks block out short
term tasks like "I like to read this mail", which in my point of view is
an absolute no-go for anything with a user interface. Added to that is that
I believe it *needlessly* synchronizes the same folders over and over and
over again. I'd like to tell it: Akonadi, see, its all your mail folders, I don't
mess with them – well usually that is – so if you put a mail there, it will be
there tomorrow, and the day after and the day after… so as long as you do
not get your state wrong, there is virtually never *ever* a need to
synchronize a folder, once you have done it and keep it up to date from
then on. See, even this BTRFS RAID 1 filesystem that stores the maildir
does not loose any files nowadays anymore – actually it never really did,
but it has some issues that are fixed by now. But *can't*. It decides to
do whatever background tasks it likes to… *blocking* me from reading
my mail. The right priority is this: If I click a mail, get that mail to me.
*Now*. Anything else is much less important. I think once it gets that
basic thing right, users will be much, much, much happier with it.
Also the stalls during message filtering after POP3 retrieval also appeared
again…
To be honest: I am disappointed about that. I know its only a few people
working on Akonadi and KDEPIM. I don't blame anyone. I get the idea behind
the concept, but I wonder whether the current thing really can be fixed
within a somewhat sensible amount of time. I know there was or is a grand
plan to fix it all up. Dan and others did quite some steps to do so, but it is
not yet completed. I even defended Akonadi quite some times… however after
all these years some of these basic things are still not fixed.
I switched to Evolution for work due to Office 365 EWS support working way
better there. It has it own shortcomings, but I tell you what: This thing *just*
works. And I had no need to do deal with any of the complexities that often
enough showed up with Akonadi. The thing *just works*. As a PIM application
suite should do. Basically I think I just did not switch privately yet, cause I
would have quite some data, accounts and things to migrate and configure
again. That is easier at work.
I know… do it yourself. However I feel I would not be able to without
investing quite some time to dig out and improve my C/C++ skills *and*
actually really understanding Akonadi's internal working. I may have a
deeper understanding than many users, but… if it would be about fixing
those issues… or even just diagnosing the stalls during message filter
after POP3 retrieval… I don't even have a clue where exactly to start.
I really consider looking into Kube and Sync… but that does not do POP3
and does not offer any other way to archive old mails locally instead of
having years of mail history sitting on the server.
It really is a pity, cause these KDEPIM applications are really, really nice
otherwise!
I know this in part has been a rant… but I felt like getting that out and I
tried to be fair to everyone nonetheless. And I know: Unless I fix it myself,
I can only hope that someone at some point takes the time to fix it. I am
not in a position to demand that anyone fixes it for me (well and maybe
them to) in their spare time.
Best,
--
Martin
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