High cpu utilization (Chromium-browser, Raspberry Pi, Raspbian)

[justi...@gmail.com]

Good afternoon,

I have an odd issue and I'm curious if anyone else has this problem. I have a concerto server running separately from the clients. On the client (Raspberry Pi 3B+) when using Chrome on current Raspbian Buster Desktop the concerto feed loads an initial frame but never rotates through items and the time stays frozen. Using chrome on my desktop works just fine. Looking further I see 4-6 chromium-browser threads running with one taking 100%+ cpu. I have been trying to launch chrome using the shortcut, using the cli, using the kiosk switch, etc. but nothing has solved the issue. I have tested this with Raspberry Pi 3B+ and 4.

Has anyone else run in to this?

Some of the existing Pis I use have older builds of Raspbian and I have no problem with them. I'd be happy to try anything suggested and post any details requested.

Thanks,

 - Justin

[Matthew Swanson]

Probably not related but the only time I've had CPU issues on the pi + Concerto was when the images I was using were a massive resolution.

[justi...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the thought -- unfortunately this isn't the case. Existing feeds being displayed on newer versions of Raspbian have high cpu utilization whereas the same hardware but older Raspbian ran fine. I have found out two more things:

1. Firefox-ESR suffers from the same issue

2. The feed works just fine if I use the Midori browser.

This leads me to think that the issue is with Chrome's fork of webkit and gecko. Midori uses webkit as well but not the same as Chrome.

At this point I think I'm going to avoid updating the software on the PIs (my security guy will LOVE that!) until i can determine what switches to use or write my own Webkit window in Python or ???. I really need to spend the time to see about building a custom Yocto or buildkit with just enough glue to boot to a browser.

Thanks again!

 - Justin

[Matthew Swanson]

I was pretty sure it wasn't image size but I thought I would check :) To appease your security guy you could put all the pis on a self-contained network and add a virtual ethernet NIC to your server with that network! Then nothing but the server can access those devices. Just a thought!