Why is gvfsd-metadata my top task in top -- is it a problem, and what should I do if it is.

[rhkr...@gmail.com]

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).

* 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>

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

It sure looks like a bug of some sort. "gvfsd-metadata" process in "top" on my system (Buster) is always idle:
    1519 xxxx      20   0  164688   5832   5284 S   0,0   0,0   0:00.09 gvfsd-metadata
Maybe this will help. [1] Sounds reasonable enough to try.
As for firefox I remember it was quite a resource hog a few years ago, but recent enough versions of it consumes so much less memory and CPU.


[1] https://iamparv.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/solved-ubuntu-gvfsd-metadata-cpu-high-usage-100/

-- 
With kindest regards, Alexander.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ 

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 10:58:10AM -0500, rhkr...@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.

[rhkr...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, February 11, 2021 12:12:45 PM Alexander V. Makartsev wrote:
> On 11.02.2021 20:58, rhkr...@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.

> It sure looks like a bug of some sort. "gvfsd-metadata" process in "top"
> on my system (Buster) is always idle:
> 1519 xxxx 20 0 164688 5832 5284 S 0,0 0,0 0:00.09
> gvfsd-metadata
> Maybe this will help. [1] Sounds reasonable enough to try.
> As for firefox I remember it was quite a resource hog a few years ago,
> but recent enough versions of it consumes so much less memory and CPU.

Thanks! I'll keep watching, but it seems that simply deleting the gvfsd-
metadata directory also killed the task, and it has not reappeared (so far).

> [1]
> https://iamparv.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/solved-ubuntu-gvfsd-metadata-cpu-h
> igh-usage-100/