Very strange -- this problem suddenly appeared on my laptop today (Xubuntu 13.04, appfinder version 4.10.0-1ubuntu1). The workaround mentioned above helped. But workarounds tend to leave a bad aftertaste...
Looked into it. It's a dbus call that times out (5 second timeout, but in newer code it's "only" 2 secs). More specifically, it's the "OpenWindow" dbus call, meant to be handled by the running appfinder server -- ironically intended to speed up launches by avoiding repeated initializations. I've attached part of an strace around where the problem occurs. Timestamps and duration are printed for each call (before and after the call info, respectively). I also noticed that dbus seemed to think that "org.xfce.Appfinder" was owned by someone, even though I couldn't find any living appfinder processes. I'm not familiar with dbus, but instinctively, I'd assume that's a bad thing. Killing the dbus-daemon made the problem go away -- of course, that also killed my whole desktop session, and I'm not sure which thing helped. Regrettably, I don't know how to trigger the problem again. Some commands that might be useful... Check which name owns "org.xfce.Appfinder": $ dbus-send --session --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus --type=method_call --print-reply /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.GetNameOwner string:org.xfce.Appfinder ..and check which PID has that name (replace the last arg with your appfinder's name): $ dbus-send --session --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus --type=method_call --print-reply /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.GetConnectionUnixProcessID string::1.66 (yes, that's a double colon -- one to separate the type and name, and one is actually part of the name.) That process has probably died, though, and only its fork will be left. For example, (after I'd restarted dbus) I got 4038 from the command above, and had a daemonized appfinder at 4039: $ ps --ppid 1 | grep appf 4039 ? 00:00:01 xfce4-appfinder ...which, just to be clear, works fine. The exact pid isn't important, as long as someone is actually handling the bus messages. Would be interesting to find the root cause for this. Not sure if it's in dbus or appfinder. BTW, I think I may have had a defunct instance of appfinder when the problem occurred, but I can't remember clearly (4 a.m. is really way too late to be debugging things like this ;)). Could someone check "ps -ef | grep appf" the next time they encounter the problem? ** Attachment added: "strace of the problem -- look for the 5 second gap in timestamps." https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-appfinder/+bug/1048805/+attachment/3747962/+files/appfinder_strace_cut.txt -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1048805 Title: xfrun4 launches very slowly To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-appfinder/+bug/1048805/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
