High CPU and network usage in Ubuntu 20.04

[ivanvi]

Hi,

I’m experiencing high CPU load (and network usage) immediately after launching the NoMachine client (nomachine-enterprise-client_7.8.2_1_amd64) on Ubuntu 20.04/Unity. This occurs before even connecting to the remote host. If I press any button, like “add” or “settings”, which brings away from the initial screen (but not the button to actually connect to the host), the CPU load and network usage goes back to normal.

There was a similar topic on the forum with no follow-up here, so, I’m attaching the files have been requested there (measuring nxplayer.bin rather than nxclient.bin):

sudo strace -o strace0.txt -tt -p $(pgrep nxplayer.bin) # “settings” button switched pressed in the client, no excessive CPU usage:

sudo strace -o strace1.txt -tt -p $(pgrep nxplayer.bin) # initial screen, abnormal cpu usage

top -b -n 5 -H -p $(pgrep nxplayer.bin) > top.txt

M.tar.gz: Directories with prefix “M-” in $HOME/.nx directory of the machine where nxplayer.bin takes too much CPU

Attachments:

1. strace0.txt
2. strace1.txt
3. top.txt
4. M.tar.gz

[Britgirl]

Hi, thanks for the detailed information you submitted.  We have a Trouble Report currently open which you can find here:

High CPU usage of NoMachine Client on Ubuntu when listing the available machines and connections
https://knowledgebase.nomachine.com/TR09S10371

We’ve still to start work on a solution, and it’s likely that the fix will be something trivial. For the moment, could you try the workaround in the TR? That is, disable the mDNS search (network browsing): open the client UI -> Settings -> Player -> Security and select ‘Don’t show other computers on the network’.

[ivanvi]

Thanks, it works for the initial screen.

However, when I connect to the remote host the CPU usage reaches 200-250% easily even if I run only terminal there. After some time it drops to 30-60% and then oscillates between something like 60 and 250% when I run, say, paraview. Is it supposed to be this way? Typical top -H:

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
179334 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 R  31,7   0,9   0:44.39 nxplayer.bin
179338 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S  26,0   0,9   0:36.28 nxplayer.bin
179342 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S  25,3   0,9   0:35.38 nxplayer.bin
179337 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 R  25,0   0,9   0:36.11 nxplayer.bin
179339 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 R  24,0   0,9   0:35.36 nxplayer.bin
179341 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S  24,0   0,9   0:34.50 nxplayer.bin
179340 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 R  23,7   0,9   0:35.05 nxplayer.bin
179343 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S  15,7   0,9   0:19.72 nxplayer.bin
179247 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   2,0   0,9   0:06.25 nxplayer.bin
179305 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,7   0,9   0:01.04 nxplayer.bin
179269 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,3   0,9   0:02.29 nxplayer.bin
179271 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,3   0,9   0:01.00 nxplayer.bin
179248 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179251 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179252 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179254 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179256 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179257 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179258 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179263 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179265 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179270 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.55 nxplayer.bin
179280 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179300 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179301 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179302 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179303 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179304 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.06 nxplayer.bin
179306 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.51 nxplayer.bin
179309 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179313 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.40 nxplayer.bin
179314 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179315 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179316 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179317 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179318 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179328 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179329 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179331 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179332 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179335 ivan      20   0 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin
179354 ivan      30  10 3282244 137264  52036 S   0,0   0,9   0:00.00 nxplayer.bin

Sincerely,

Ivan

 

[Britgirl]

So it would seem a separate issue (when you are connected to the remote host and not when opening the UI), but logs will help us to understand what’s happening. Can you send the logs from the Enterprise Client host, this time following the instructions here: https://knowledgebase.nomachine.com/DT11R00181#2?

[ivanvi]

Yes, it looks like a separate issue. The page there says that I should send the logs as an attachment to an email to the support, but I couldn’t find the actual address, could you indicate one? Thank you.

[Britgirl]

If you can’t attach them here because there are too big, you can send them to forum[at]nomachine[dot]com. Please use the title of  your topic as the subject of your email. Thanks.

[ivanvi]

No, they are not too big, here they are. The session was like this: I opened !M, connected to the remote cluster, ran paraview (3D data viewer) with vglrun, loaded some data into paraview, manipulated it for a couple of seconds and logged out from the session. CPU usage was about 200%.

Thanks

Attachments:

1. nxdir.tar.gz

[Britgirl]

invanvi, it could be related to HW decoding.

Can you disable HW decoding on the client side and tell us if this changes anything? Start the session, open the connection menu Ctrl-Alt-0, Display Settings -> Advanced (click modify) and check the box “Disable client side hardware decoding”.

You can also try disabling “client-side image post-processing”.

What happens?

[ivanvi]

Hi, it looks like it works way better now when we switched from Gnome to XFCE. CPU consumption dropped to 40-60% when !M is in background, which is ok. Thanks for your help.

[Britgirl]

Thanks for letting us know 🙂

[Author]

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