Re: Why is gvfsd-metadata my top task in top -- is it a problem, and what should I do if it is.
On Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 10:58:10AM -0500, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> On my Wheezy system, I've noticed that for the past 2 or 3 days, gvfsd-
> metadata has been the top running task when I check with top.
>
> Comments:
>
> * I've never seen that before (I've never even noticed that I had such as
> task running (I didn't look for it, but I didn't see it)
>
> * I did a little googling to see what it is / does, it seems to have
> something to do (didn't read thoroughly or completely) to do with file access,
> maybe starting with GNOME based files, but maybe also other files.
>
> * I'm running Wheezy (Debian 7.n, up-to-date (as of when Wheezy stopped
> being updated), with KDE (3.n), and I'm not ready to give up the version of
> kmail there (which does not use Akonadi (sp?). (I am aware of the Trinity
> system that continues to support KDE 3.n, and, if I have to give up on Debian,
> I would install Trinity on this system).
>
Potentially stop there and take the time to disconnect the machine from the
Internet. You have NO security support, particularly, and no means of getting
fixes for problems.
Please DON'T run software beyond it's security support. It may mean nothing to
you but if your computer were to be compromised by a well-known security
problem, who knows what it might be used for - it's certainly no longer under
your control. Any problems you are experiencing now are almnost certainly
beyond reasonably instant memory recall as to what they might be and
certainly beyond fixing.
EOL (End of life) was more or less two years eight months ago: please consider upgrading
to at least Debian 10
All the best,
Andy C.
> * Almost always, when I check top, firefox-esr (sometimes without the esr,
> iirc) or Web Content are the top two tasks.
>
> * A few days ago, firefox was running very slow (too many tabs open) so I
> restarted firefox. I can't say for sure that gvfsd-metadata started being the
> top running task after I did that (because I didn't check immediately), but I
> can say that wasn't the top task before I restarted firefox.
>
> * Before the restart mentioned above, either Web Content (or firefox-esr)
> was using 13 GB of space and often hit 100% CPU (on this two core system).
>
> Firefox is working better since the restart, and I can't say that I notice any
> real problems at this time, firefox might be a little slower than before the
> restart.
>
> I'm looking for comments -- should I be concerned about this? Should I do
> anything about it?
>
> I suspect that stopping gvfsd would be a mistake (well, unless I restarted
> it). I do have thoughts about rebooting the system, maybe it is time to clear
> out some cruft (of whatever sort)?
>
> Comments?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Below are the top 6 tasks reported by top:
>
> <quote>
> rhk@s19:/rhk$ top
> top - 10:40:57 up 67 days, 17:55, 21 users, load average: 2.26, 2.26, 2.16
> Tasks: 229 total, 1 running, 228 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
> %Cpu(s): 69.3 us, 4.4 sy, 0.0 ni, 20.3 id, 5.5 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.5 si, 0.0
> st
> KiB Mem: 16212908 total, 9300160 used, 6912748 free, 181116 buffers
> KiB Swap: 19529724 total, 4562804 used, 14966920 free, 1698380 cached
>
> PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
> 22616 rhk 20 0 63984 1152 336 D 74.4 0.0 40734:56 gvfsd-metadata
> 25018 rhk 20 0 3529m 1.3g 384m S 57.1 8.2 1403:55 Web Content
> 22467 rhk 20 0 6724m 3.4g 301m S 8.6 21.9 386:23.01 firefox-esr
> 3018 root 20 0 1187m 603m 204m S 2.3 3.8 736:59.19 Xorg
> 1540 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 2.0 0.0 965:44.59 jbd2/sdb12-8
> 3654 rhk 20 0 381m 21m 11m S 1.7 0.1 90:34.37 konsole
> </quote>
>
>
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