[opensuse-factory] 100% X CPU usage in recent TW, seems touchpad-related

Hi all, If I try to upgrade my laptop (Gigabyte P35X), which currently runs 20171211, to any recent Tumbleweed snapshot (at least since 20171223, I don't know if it was there before), X goes spinning at 100% CPU usage and my X11 log becomes full of "(EE) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Read error 9". The touchpad otherwise seems to work normally, but the fan noise and battery drain are obviously unwelcome. Do you have any tips on how to narrow this down to a precise component / update and send appropriate bug reports upstream? I did not see anything in the snapshot announcements that I could obviously relate to Elantech touchpads or the way X11 handles them, aside from some bugfix libinput updates in 20171213 and 20171220. But the Linux UI stack is very complex and there were quite a lot of updates in the 20171211-20171223 period, so I may have missed something important. Cheers, Hadrien -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Op woensdag 10 januari 2018 08:45:36 CET schreef Hadrien Grasland:
Hi all,
If I try to upgrade my laptop (Gigabyte P35X), which currently runs 20171211, to any recent Tumbleweed snapshot (at least since 20171223, I don't know if it was there before), X goes spinning at 100% CPU usage and my X11 log becomes full of "(EE) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Read error 9". The touchpad otherwise seems to work normally, but the fan noise and battery drain are obviously unwelcome.
Do you have any tips on how to narrow this down to a precise component / update and send appropriate bug reports upstream? I did not see anything in the snapshot announcements that I could obviously relate to Elantech touchpads or the way X11 handles them, aside from some bugfix libinput updates in 20171213 and 20171220. But the Linux UI stack is very complex and there were quite a lot of updates in the 20171211-20171223 period, so I may have missed something important.
Cheers, Hadrien Exactly how are you performing the upgrade ?? Nothing related? How about kernel-updates ??
-- Gertjan Lettink, a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Le 10/01/2018 à 13:24, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink a écrit :
Op woensdag 10 januari 2018 08:45:36 CET schreef Hadrien Grasland:
Hi all,
If I try to upgrade my laptop (Gigabyte P35X), which currently runs 20171211, to any recent Tumbleweed snapshot (at least since 20171223, I don't know if it was there before), X goes spinning at 100% CPU usage and my X11 log becomes full of "(EE) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Read error 9". The touchpad otherwise seems to work normally, but the fan noise and battery drain are obviously unwelcome.
Do you have any tips on how to narrow this down to a precise component / update and send appropriate bug reports upstream? I did not see anything in the snapshot announcements that I could obviously relate to Elantech touchpads or the way X11 handles them, aside from some bugfix libinput updates in 20171213 and 20171220. But the Linux UI stack is very complex and there were quite a lot of updates in the 20171211-20171223 period, so I may have missed something important.
Cheers, Hadrien Exactly how are you performing the upgrade ?? Nothing related? How about kernel-updates ??
I am performing upgrades via "zypper dup" I tried to look again more carefully for suspicious updates in the period of interest. Indeed, I missed a couple of things in my first investigation, including some kernel updates. To my uninformed eye, here are the updates from that 20171211 -> 20171223 period that I could imagine being potentially involved in a touchpad bug, erring on the side of false positives: * dbus: 1.10.20 -> 1.12.2 (20171215) * fwupd 1.0.0 -> [unversioned] (20171220) -> 1.0.2 (20171222) -> [unversioned] (20171223) * glibc patches (20171216) * kernel: 4.14.4 -> 4.14.5 (20171214) -> 4.14.6 (20171215) -> 4.14.8 (20171223) * kernel-firmware: 20171125 -> 20171204 (20171212) * libinput: 1.9.2 -> 1.9.3 (20171213) -> 1.9.4 (20171220) I did not find any particularly suspicious changelog in any of these updates, but AFAIK libinput is where the modern drivers for synaptics touchpads are located and there were quite a lot of kernel patches in the USB stack (which is, AFAIK, how the touchpad is internally connected in that laptop), so I think these two are the biggest suspects at this point in time. Any tips for narrowing down the cause further? For example, is there a way to install older Tumbleweed snapshots, instead of merely updating to the latest one? It would help bisect the issue in this kind of situation. Cheers, Hadrien -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Op woensdag 10 januari 2018 14:51:07 CET schreef Hadrien Grasland:
Le 10/01/2018 à 13:24, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink a écrit :
Op woensdag 10 januari 2018 08:45:36 CET schreef Hadrien Grasland:
Hi all,
If I try to upgrade my laptop (Gigabyte P35X), which currently runs 20171211, to any recent Tumbleweed snapshot (at least since 20171223, I don't know if it was there before), X goes spinning at 100% CPU usage and my X11 log becomes full of "(EE) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Read error 9". The touchpad otherwise seems to work normally, but the fan noise and battery drain are obviously unwelcome.
Do you have any tips on how to narrow this down to a precise component / update and send appropriate bug reports upstream? I did not see anything in the snapshot announcements that I could obviously relate to Elantech touchpads or the way X11 handles them, aside from some bugfix libinput updates in 20171213 and 20171220. But the Linux UI stack is very complex and there were quite a lot of updates in the 20171211-20171223 period, so I may have missed something important.
Cheers, Hadrien
Exactly how are you performing the upgrade ?? Nothing related? How about kernel-updates ??
I am performing upgrades via "zypper dup"
I tried to look again more carefully for suspicious updates in the period of interest. Indeed, I missed a couple of things in my first investigation, including some kernel updates.
To my uninformed eye, here are the updates from that 20171211 -> 20171223 period that I could imagine being potentially involved in a touchpad bug, erring on the side of false positives:
* dbus: 1.10.20 -> 1.12.2 (20171215) * fwupd 1.0.0 -> [unversioned] (20171220) -> 1.0.2 (20171222) -> [unversioned] (20171223) * glibc patches (20171216) * kernel: 4.14.4 -> 4.14.5 (20171214) -> 4.14.6 (20171215) -> 4.14.8 (20171223) * kernel-firmware: 20171125 -> 20171204 (20171212) * libinput: 1.9.2 -> 1.9.3 (20171213) -> 1.9.4 (20171220)
I did not find any particularly suspicious changelog in any of these updates, but AFAIK libinput is where the modern drivers for synaptics touchpads are located and there were quite a lot of kernel patches in the USB stack (which is, AFAIK, how the touchpad is internally connected in that laptop), so I think these two are the biggest suspects at this point in time.
Any tips for narrowing down the cause further? For example, is there a way to install older Tumbleweed snapshots, instead of merely updating to the latest one? It would help bisect the issue in this kind of situation.
Cheers, Hadrien If you use btrfs you should be able to boot in previous snapshots. It is not possible to install older TW snapshots. That would require copies of the repos on every snapshots, which would come at huge costs.
-- Gertjan Lettink, a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Le 10/01/2018 à 15:02, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink a écrit :
Op woensdag 10 januari 2018 14:51:07 CET schreef Hadrien Grasland:
Le 10/01/2018 à 13:24, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink a écrit :
Op woensdag 10 januari 2018 08:45:36 CET schreef Hadrien Grasland:
Hi all,
If I try to upgrade my laptop (Gigabyte P35X), which currently runs 20171211, to any recent Tumbleweed snapshot (at least since 20171223, I don't know if it was there before), X goes spinning at 100% CPU usage and my X11 log becomes full of "(EE) ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Read error 9". The touchpad otherwise seems to work normally, but the fan noise and battery drain are obviously unwelcome.
Do you have any tips on how to narrow this down to a precise component / update and send appropriate bug reports upstream? I did not see anything in the snapshot announcements that I could obviously relate to Elantech touchpads or the way X11 handles them, aside from some bugfix libinput updates in 20171213 and 20171220. But the Linux UI stack is very complex and there were quite a lot of updates in the 20171211-20171223 period, so I may have missed something important.
Cheers, Hadrien Exactly how are you performing the upgrade ?? Nothing related? How about kernel-updates ?? I am performing upgrades via "zypper dup"
I tried to look again more carefully for suspicious updates in the period of interest. Indeed, I missed a couple of things in my first investigation, including some kernel updates.
To my uninformed eye, here are the updates from that 20171211 -> 20171223 period that I could imagine being potentially involved in a touchpad bug, erring on the side of false positives:
* dbus: 1.10.20 -> 1.12.2 (20171215) * fwupd 1.0.0 -> [unversioned] (20171220) -> 1.0.2 (20171222) -> [unversioned] (20171223) * glibc patches (20171216) * kernel: 4.14.4 -> 4.14.5 (20171214) -> 4.14.6 (20171215) -> 4.14.8 (20171223) * kernel-firmware: 20171125 -> 20171204 (20171212) * libinput: 1.9.2 -> 1.9.3 (20171213) -> 1.9.4 (20171220)
I did not find any particularly suspicious changelog in any of these updates, but AFAIK libinput is where the modern drivers for synaptics touchpads are located and there were quite a lot of kernel patches in the USB stack (which is, AFAIK, how the touchpad is internally connected in that laptop), so I think these two are the biggest suspects at this point in time.
Any tips for narrowing down the cause further? For example, is there a way to install older Tumbleweed snapshots, instead of merely updating to the latest one? It would help bisect the issue in this kind of situation.
Cheers, Hadrien If you use btrfs you should be able to boot in previous snapshots. It is not possible to install older TW snapshots. That would require copies of the repos on every snapshots, which would come at huge costs.
Unfortunately, I have not installed the snapshots between 20171211 and 20171223 on this system. So I guess the above is as precise as I'll be able to get :) Any other tip? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Hello, Am Mittwoch, 10. Januar 2018, 15:02:21 CET schrieb Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink:
It is not possible to install older TW snapshots. That would require copies of the repos on every snapshots, which would come at huge costs.
Nothing is impossible ;-) In fact, Jimmy Berry did exactly that - see http://release-tools.opensuse.org/ for details. The article from 2017-11-22 should help to get started. Note that I only read about this, but never used it - the software from yesterday's snapshot is too old for me ;-) Regards, Christian Boltz -- Aussage eines Mathematikprofessors von mir: 'Die Informatiker, das sind die, die dann am Bahnsteig stehen, und ihre Koffer zählen - 0, 1, 2 - Mist, wo ist der dritte Koffer?' [Adalbert Michelic in suse-linux] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Le 10/01/2018 à 18:03, Christian Boltz a écrit :
Hello,
Am Mittwoch, 10. Januar 2018, 15:02:21 CET schrieb Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink:
It is not possible to install older TW snapshots. That would require copies of the repos on every snapshots, which would come at huge costs. Nothing is impossible ;-)
In fact, Jimmy Berry did exactly that - see http://release-tools.opensuse.org/ for details. The article from 2017-11-22 should help to get started.
Note that I only read about this, but never used it - the software from yesterday's snapshot is too old for me ;-)
Regards,
Christian Boltz
Hi Christian, I'm trying this out right now, and it does indeed seem to be the perfect tool for bisecting exactly which snapshot is causing my touchpad issues :) That being said, if it gets more popular, I do hope that someone with lots of money or spare optical fibers will donate some better hosting to Jimmy. For the purpose of downloading Tumbleweed's gigabyte-sized snapshots, a downstream bandwidth of ~20 kB/s is downright painful... Cheers, Hadrien -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Le 10/01/2018 à 21:26, Hadrien Grasland a écrit :
Le 10/01/2018 à 18:03, Christian Boltz a écrit :
Hello,
Am Mittwoch, 10. Januar 2018, 15:02:21 CET schrieb Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink:
It is not possible to install older TW snapshots. That would require copies of the repos on every snapshots, which would come at huge costs. Nothing is impossible ;-)
In fact, Jimmy Berry did exactly that - see http://release-tools.opensuse.org/ for details. The article from 2017-11-22 should help to get started.
Note that I only read about this, but never used it - the software from yesterday's snapshot is too old for me ;-)
Regards,
Christian Boltz
Hi Christian,
I'm trying this out right now, and it does indeed seem to be the perfect tool for bisecting exactly which snapshot is causing my touchpad issues :)
That being said, if it gets more popular, I do hope that someone with lots of money or spare optical fibers will donate some better hosting to Jimmy. For the purpose of downloading Tumbleweed's gigabyte-sized snapshots, a downstream bandwidth of ~20 kB/s is downright painful...
Cheers, Hadrien
Hi all, Using Jimmy Berry's Tumbleweed snapshots, I managed to narrow down the issue to the upgrade between the 20171220 and the 20171222 snapshot. This is interesting since... * It is not the snapshot which I would have most expected to be faulty from the update logs that I found on opensuse-factory. * Its contents differ from the expectations which I had from the update logs that I found on the opensuse-factory archive. I send you a copy of the zypper log associated with this problematic upgrade, in case someone has a deeper insight than me on what specifically could cause the problem in there. Right now, my top candidate is the 4.14.6-1.6 to 4.14.6-1.8 kernel update (however minor it may look), followed by various accessibility-related packages which may possibly interact with X11's input handling in ways I am unaware of. I will try to install these one by one later on, and see what happens.... Cheers, Hadrien

Le 11/01/2018 à 08:55, Hadrien Grasland a écrit :
Le 10/01/2018 à 21:26, Hadrien Grasland a écrit :
Le 10/01/2018 à 18:03, Christian Boltz a écrit :
Hello,
Am Mittwoch, 10. Januar 2018, 15:02:21 CET schrieb Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink:
It is not possible to install older TW snapshots. That would require copies of the repos on every snapshots, which would come at huge costs. Nothing is impossible ;-)
In fact, Jimmy Berry did exactly that - see http://release-tools.opensuse.org/ for details. The article from 2017-11-22 should help to get started.
Note that I only read about this, but never used it - the software from yesterday's snapshot is too old for me ;-)
Regards,
Christian Boltz
Hi Christian,
I'm trying this out right now, and it does indeed seem to be the perfect tool for bisecting exactly which snapshot is causing my touchpad issues :)
That being said, if it gets more popular, I do hope that someone with lots of money or spare optical fibers will donate some better hosting to Jimmy. For the purpose of downloading Tumbleweed's gigabyte-sized snapshots, a downstream bandwidth of ~20 kB/s is downright painful...
Cheers, Hadrien
Hi all,
Using Jimmy Berry's Tumbleweed snapshots, I managed to narrow down the issue to the upgrade between the 20171220 and the 20171222 snapshot. This is interesting since...
* It is not the snapshot which I would have most expected to be faulty from the update logs that I found on opensuse-factory. * Its contents differ from the expectations which I had from the update logs that I found on the opensuse-factory archive.
I send you a copy of the zypper log associated with this problematic upgrade, in case someone has a deeper insight than me on what specifically could cause the problem in there. Right now, my top candidate is the 4.14.6-1.6 to 4.14.6-1.8 kernel update (however minor it may look), followed by various accessibility-related packages which may possibly interact with X11's input handling in ways I am unaware of.
I will try to install these one by one later on, and see what happens....
Cheers, Hadrien
Hi all, I investigated this a bit more yesterday, and reached a point where I have a system which boots and works fine, but running dracut for any reason (either manually or by installing a package which requires it like device-mapper) breaks it. This is unfortunate: so far, I assumed that zypper automatically ran dracut whenever anything initrd-related changed, and it seems that this is not the case after all. Now I'll need to rewind through my btrfs snapshot history until I find the point in time where the the system actually broke, and start over from there... Hopefully it's not too far away in the past, and snapper has not garbage-collected it away yet. Cheers, Hadrien -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Le 12/01/2018 à 08:40, Hadrien Grasland a écrit :
Le 11/01/2018 à 08:55, Hadrien Grasland a écrit :
Le 10/01/2018 à 21:26, Hadrien Grasland a écrit :
Le 10/01/2018 à 18:03, Christian Boltz a écrit :
Hello,
Am Mittwoch, 10. Januar 2018, 15:02:21 CET schrieb Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink:
It is not possible to install older TW snapshots. That would require copies of the repos on every snapshots, which would come at huge costs. Nothing is impossible ;-)
In fact, Jimmy Berry did exactly that - see http://release-tools.opensuse.org/ for details. The article from 2017-11-22 should help to get started.
Note that I only read about this, but never used it - the software from yesterday's snapshot is too old for me ;-)
Regards,
Christian Boltz
Hi Christian,
I'm trying this out right now, and it does indeed seem to be the perfect tool for bisecting exactly which snapshot is causing my touchpad issues :)
That being said, if it gets more popular, I do hope that someone with lots of money or spare optical fibers will donate some better hosting to Jimmy. For the purpose of downloading Tumbleweed's gigabyte-sized snapshots, a downstream bandwidth of ~20 kB/s is downright painful...
Cheers, Hadrien
Hi all,
Using Jimmy Berry's Tumbleweed snapshots, I managed to narrow down the issue to the upgrade between the 20171220 and the 20171222 snapshot. This is interesting since...
* It is not the snapshot which I would have most expected to be faulty from the update logs that I found on opensuse-factory. * Its contents differ from the expectations which I had from the update logs that I found on the opensuse-factory archive.
I send you a copy of the zypper log associated with this problematic upgrade, in case someone has a deeper insight than me on what specifically could cause the problem in there. Right now, my top candidate is the 4.14.6-1.6 to 4.14.6-1.8 kernel update (however minor it may look), followed by various accessibility-related packages which may possibly interact with X11's input handling in ways I am unaware of.
I will try to install these one by one later on, and see what happens....
Cheers, Hadrien
Hi all,
I investigated this a bit more yesterday, and reached a point where I have a system which boots and works fine, but running dracut for any reason (either manually or by installing a package which requires it like device-mapper) breaks it.
This is unfortunate: so far, I assumed that zypper automatically ran dracut whenever anything initrd-related changed, and it seems that this is not the case after all. Now I'll need to rewind through my btrfs snapshot history until I find the point in time where the the system actually broke, and start over from there... Hopefully it's not too far away in the past, and snapper has not garbage-collected it away yet.
Cheers, Hadrien
Hi all, So, after further experiments, I narrowed all of my touchpad issues down to a plymouth update (0.9.2 -> 0.9.3). If I don't install the plymouth update, or if I disable plymouth after installing the update (by adding "plymouth.enable=0" to the kernel command line), my X process doesn't go crazy spinning on the CPU and spamming the logs with touchpad driver errors. If I enable plymouth again, my laptop's X server goes back into its former crazy state. I'm happy with disabling plymouth as a temporary workaround, because it allows me to keep my laptop up to date while the problem gets fixed. But at the same time, I'm also completely lost: how can an update to plymouth, a piece of software which afaik is only there to display fancy splash screens at boot time, break handling of touchpads in X11? Could perhaps something go wrong in the plymouth -> X11 display handover? Where should I submit a bug report about this? Cheers, Hadrien -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Hello, Am Samstag, 13. Januar 2018, 20:58:53 CET schrieb Hadrien Grasland:
But at the same time, I'm also completely lost: how can an update to plymouth, a piece of software which afaik is only there to display fancy splash screens at boot time, break handling of touchpads in X11? Could perhaps something go wrong in the plymouth -> X11 display handover? Where should I submit a bug report about this?
Following the good old "if you break it, you own both parts" rule, report a bug against plymouth, and CC the X11 maintainer. -> assignee qzhao AT suse.com and CC sndirsch AT suse.com Regards, Christian Boltz -- [tgz Datei entpacken] tar xzf <Archiv> Für weitere Informationen lesen Sie bitte die Manpage oder Ihren Admin. [Torsten Hallmann in suse-linux] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Le 13/01/2018 à 21:52, Christian Boltz a écrit :
Hello,
Am Samstag, 13. Januar 2018, 20:58:53 CET schrieb Hadrien Grasland:
But at the same time, I'm also completely lost: how can an update to plymouth, a piece of software which afaik is only there to display fancy splash screens at boot time, break handling of touchpads in X11? Could perhaps something go wrong in the plymouth -> X11 display handover? Where should I submit a bug report about this? Following the good old "if you break it, you own both parts" rule, report a bug against plymouth, and CC the X11 maintainer.
-> assignee qzhao AT suse.com and CC sndirsch AT suse.com
Submitted @ https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1075885 , if anyone wants to follow the remainder of this bug-hunting saga. Thanks Gertjan and Christian for helping me diagnose this, and apologies to the innocent bystanders who got too many e-mails about this issue! Hadrien -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 2018-01-13 20:58, Hadrien Grasland wrote:
Hi all,
So, after further experiments, I narrowed all of my touchpad issues down to a plymouth update (0.9.2 -> 0.9.3).
If I don't install the plymouth update, or if I disable plymouth after installing the update (by adding "plymouth.enable=0" to the kernel command line), my X process doesn't go crazy spinning on the CPU and spamming the logs with touchpad driver errors. If I enable plymouth again, my laptop's X server goes back into its former crazy state.
Wow! I'm sorry to say that since about its appearance, thus years ago, I routinely uninstall plymouth from all my systems. It has caused me and others lots of troubles. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)
participants (4)
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Carlos E. R.
-
Christian Boltz
-
Hadrien Grasland
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Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink