We have noticed significant desktop/UI lag on CentOS7 workstations using Mate when the CPU usage is high - i.e. the mouse pointer lags and moving windows (e.g. terminal windows) become jumpy (not smooth)
We didn't see (or notice) this issue with CentOS6/Gnome2
This can easily be shown by running something like 'cpuburn' (https://patrickmn.com/projects/cpuburn/) and moving a mate-terminal window around the screen
We can make things 'better' by running CPU intensive apps via 'nice' (without any noticeable performance hit to the CPU intensive app) - but this is a rather messy way of fixing the issue
We can also make things better by renice'ing X to a negative nice level
However, both these approaches seem wrong to me - as I'm probably missing something straightforward here
Does anyone know of any CentOS7/Mate settings that could be used to improve desktop/UI responsiveness with high CPU usage ?
Thanks
James Pearson
On 07/18/2018 10:31 AM, James Pearson wrote:
We have noticed significant desktop/UI lag on CentOS7 workstations using Mate when the CPU usage is high - i.e. the mouse pointer lags and moving windows (e.g. terminal windows) become jumpy (not smooth)
We didn't see (or notice) this issue with CentOS6/Gnome2
This can easily be shown by running something like 'cpuburn' (https://patrickmn.com/projects/cpuburn/) and moving a mate-terminal window around the screen
We can make things 'better' by running CPU intensive apps via 'nice' (without any noticeable performance hit to the CPU intensive app) - but this is a rather messy way of fixing the issue
We can also make things better by renice'ing X to a negative nice level
However, both these approaches seem wrong to me - as I'm probably missing something straightforward here
Does anyone know of any CentOS7/Mate settings that could be used to improve desktop/UI responsiveness with high CPU usage ?
Personally, I would just move to gnmoe3 and use the Gnome Classic desktop.
On 07/18/2018 08:40 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
Personally, I would just move to gnmoe3 and use the Gnome Classic desktop.
FWIW I recently found that starting from CentOS 7.5, gsd-account/polkitd have been constantly using 10%-15% CPU.
I dug it a little bit yesterday and found the cause: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1600161#c3
Workaround is to disable account password expiration check by removing /etc/xdg/autostart/org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Account.desktop
If you are switching too/using GNOME3 and see high CPU usage. This might be a cause.
On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 10:40:15AM -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 07/18/2018 10:31 AM, James Pearson wrote:
We have noticed significant desktop/UI lag on CentOS7 workstations using Mate when the CPU usage is high - i.e. the mouse pointer lags and moving windows (e.g. terminal windows) become jumpy (not smooth)
We didn't see (or notice) this issue with CentOS6/Gnome2
This can easily be shown by running something like 'cpuburn' (https://patrickmn.com/projects/cpuburn/) and moving a mate-terminal window around the screen
We can make things 'better' by running CPU intensive apps via 'nice' (without any noticeable performance hit to the CPU intensive app) - but this is a rather messy way of fixing the issue
We can also make things better by renice'ing X to a negative nice level
However, both these approaches seem wrong to me - as I'm probably missing something straightforward here
Does anyone know of any CentOS7/Mate settings that could be used to improve desktop/UI responsiveness with high CPU usage ?
Personally, I would just move to gnmoe3 and use the Gnome Classic desktop.
you're making a couple of assumptions here: 1. that Mate is the cause, and 2. Gnome 3 with the Gnome Classic add-ons is just as good and easy to use as is Mate. I can assure you that it isn't. It is still Gnome 3 with all the horribleness thereof.
Fred Smith wrote:
On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 10:40:15AM -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 07/18/2018 10:31 AM, James Pearson wrote:
We have noticed significant desktop/UI lag on CentOS7 workstations using Mate when the CPU usage is high - i.e. the mouse pointer lags and moving windows (e.g. terminal windows) become jumpy (not smooth)
We didn't see (or notice) this issue with CentOS6/Gnome2
This can easily be shown by running something like 'cpuburn' (https://patrickmn.com/projects/cpuburn/) and moving a mate-terminal window around the screen
We can make things 'better' by running CPU intensive apps via 'nice' (without any noticeable performance hit to the CPU intensive app) - but this is a rather messy way of fixing the issue
We can also make things better by renice'ing X to a negative nice level
However, both these approaches seem wrong to me - as I'm probably missing something straightforward here
Does anyone know of any CentOS7/Mate settings that could be used to improve desktop/UI responsiveness with high CPU usage ?
Personally, I would just move to gnmoe3 and use the Gnome Classic desktop.
you're making a couple of assumptions here: 1. that Mate is the cause, and 2. Gnome 3 with the Gnome Classic add-ons is just as good and easy to use as is Mate. I can assure you that it isn't. It is still Gnome 3 with all the horribleness thereof.
I run kde. Less bloat and cuteness than gnome.
mark
James Pearson wrote:
We have noticed significant desktop/UI lag on CentOS7 workstations using Mate when the CPU usage is high - i.e. the mouse pointer lags and moving windows (e.g. terminal windows) become jumpy (not smooth)
We didn't see (or notice) this issue with CentOS6/Gnome2
This can easily be shown by running something like 'cpuburn' (https://patrickmn.com/projects/cpuburn/) and moving a mate-terminal window around the screen
We can make things 'better' by running CPU intensive apps via 'nice' (without any noticeable performance hit to the CPU intensive app) - but this is a rather messy way of fixing the issue
We can also make things better by renice'ing X to a negative nice level
However, both these approaches seem wrong to me - as I'm probably missing something straightforward here
Does anyone know of any CentOS7/Mate settings that could be used to improve desktop/UI responsiveness with high CPU usage ?
Just to follow up on this - we think this issue _might_ be self inflicted ...
When we started moving users to CentOS 7 from CentOS 6, we had reports that things like opening shells, running scripts and similar non-CPU intensive everyday tasks were generally 'slower' - this turned out to be a result of the default 'tuned' policy ('balanced') using the 'conservative' CPU governor setting (we didn't have any similar CPU throttling set up on CentOS 6) - and switching to the 'throughput-performance' tuned policy 'fixed' this issue for us - as it uses the 'performance' CPU governor
However, it looks like something else in the 'throughput-performance' policy is causing (or contributing to) the desktop lag issues we've been seeing - and switching to a custom tuned profile (based on 'balanced' but using the 'performance' CPU governor) appears to fix our desktop lag issues ...
James Pearson
-
Fred Smith -
James Pearson -
Johnny Hughes -
mark -
Yan Li