[xubuntu-users] System slow, multiple thunar processes running

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 2 Sep 2017 21:28:02 -0700, John R. Sowden wrote:
>I did not sort any column, what you see is the raw data from your
>command.

I know. Apart from Thunar, what did you see when runing top? You
mentioned you run top.

>But I do not think sorting would do any good because the 'thunar'
>lines were constantly moving all over the screen covering the about
>top 25 lines.  What you captured with your command is a snapshot of a
>moment. By the way, when I went home, I ran the top command on my home
>computer, same LTS version, there were no 'thunars' on the listing at
>all.

If you run top and sort by CPU and memory usage as described by my
previous reply, you might see programs that take much CPU and or memory.
I neither know if you are using the new top or the classic top, nor if
you customized top or if you run it with it's defaults. The "top lines"
are sorted by something. Howe are they sorted for you?

I'm using the classic top, not available by Arch Linux's official
repositories. IIRC the new top by upstream default sorts by PID.

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ pacman -Qi procps-ng-classic | head -3
Name            : procps-ng-classic
Version         : 3.3.11-1
Description     : Utilities for monitoring your system and its
                  processes (with classic top)

>I think the main issue here is, why are these thunars running on my 
>computer at all, if I do not have a file manager open.

Is there any evidence that thunar slows down performance?

You are running an Ubuntu flavour and the bloated xfce4 desktop
environment, if you didn't customize your install, there are running
all kinds of services and all kinds of drivers are loaded you don't
need, wasting memory, CPU and sharing hardware IRQs. Most averaged
desktop users with powerful computers won't notice this. It becomes
important for e.g. real-time tasks especially on less powerful
computers.

I stopped my openbox session and booted xfce4. This is on Arch Linux,
but even my Ubuntu is a tailored install, so I e.g. don't have gvfs
installed, which already makes a big difference, when running thunar.
However...

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ps aux|head -1;ps aux|grep -i thunar|grep -v grep
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND

...no instance of thunar runs, after loging in.

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ps aux|head -1;ps aux|grep -i thunar|grep -v grep
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
rocketm+ 25845  3.5  0.3 423908 30656 ?        Sl   07:56   0:00 /usr/bin/Thunar

If I launch thunar, an instance of thunar runs.

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ps aux|head -1;ps aux|grep -i thunar|grep -v grep
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
rocketm+ 25845  0.5  0.3 423908 30780 ?        Sl   07:56   0:00 /usr/bin/Thunar
rocketm+ 25854  0.6  0.2 341924 22260 ?        Sl   07:56   0:00 /usr/bin/Thunar --daemon

If I create an empty file by the right click menu on the desktop, an
instance of thunar in daemon mode is launched.

This is an important fact and might explain why there are running
instances of thunar for you.

Bloated desktop environment do such idiotic things. Note, gvfs wakes up
external green drives right after they fall asleep. Those constantly
repeated spin downs and spin ups damage HDDs. There is the myth that
green WD drives have a buggy firmware, but they don't, it's broken
software such as gvfs that does cause the issue and sure, running
smartd or similar software makes no sense when using external green
drives. Lxpanel also woke up green drives, but upstream immediately
fixed it, after I reported the bug. Upstream of bloated environments
never ever will fix this and similar bugs.

Anyway, since I don't have gvfs installed, I can't test gvfs related
issues for you. But instances of thunar might get launched and keep
running in the background after using a gvfs related service, such as
using "Trash".

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ps aux|head -1;ps aux|grep -i thunar|grep -v grep
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
rocketm+ 25854  0.2  0.2 341924 22276 ?        Sl   07:56   0:00 /usr/bin/Thunar --daemon

It stays there forever. IMO a desktop is good for absolutely nothing. I'm
an openbox user, without a desktop, feh just sets a wallpaper. If I want
to create an empty file, I would do it from command line using the touch
command.

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ps aux|head -1;ps aux|grep -i gvfs|grep -v grep
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND

As you can see, nothing related to gvfs is running.

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ps aux|head -1;ps aux|grep -i xfdesk|grep -v grep
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
rocketm+ 25777  0.3  0.8 609856 68952 ?        Sl   07:55   0:01 xfdesktop --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 2e95e0554-eaa6-4e57-9129-1eabf6e7605b

This is how xfdesktop was autostarted for my session.

Résumé
------

The few instances that sometimes open this old Firfox folder don't need
that much CPU or memory that they could slow down performance in the
way you described. They still could be the cause for the performance
issue, but perhaps something else does cause the issue, e.g. a process
that needs much CPU or memory.

If you run top, change the way top sorts. Sort by CPU and after that by
memory usage.

Regards,
Ralf