Here's a cool flash animation about size of things in the universe:
http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/
If I run it on my Ubuntu linux box with the latest firefox browser and flash plugin, it works fine.
But if I access the browser on my linux box with x2go-client from a windows machine, the flash animation brings x2go nearly to a freeze. It does eventually respond, but it takes tens of seconds. The animation is totally unusable. I am barely able to close the browser window to get things back to normal (click on the X and then wait 30 seconds for the browser window to close).
Has anyone else seen this behavior?
Full frame-rate video is one of the things that remote display technologies are not very good at. Imagine the volume of data that is trying to be pushed across the wire. What is needed is remote technology that can query the client to see what GPU capabilities it has and then switch over to just sending X damage objects to the client and let the client perform the rendering using local hardware. We're a long way from there currently.
-Gerry
On 12/21/2010 10:21 PM, John Williams wrote:
Here's a cool flash animation about size of things in the universe:
http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/
If I run it on my Ubuntu linux box with the latest firefox browser and flash plugin, it works fine.
But if I access the browser on my linux box with x2go-client from a windows machine, the flash animation brings x2go nearly to a freeze. It does eventually respond, but it takes tens of seconds. The animation is totally unusable. I am barely able to close the browser window to get things back to normal (click on the X and then wait 30 seconds for the browser window to close).
Has anyone else seen this behavior?
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On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Gerry Reno <greno@verizon.net> wrote:
Full frame-rate video is one of the things that remote display technologies are not very good at. Imagine the volume of data that is trying to be pushed across the wire.
No, that is not the problem. I can actually watch a small video over x2go without bringing the system to its knees (i.e., the video plays without the system freezing or becoming unresponsive).
Actually, I probably should not call the universe scale thing a flash animation, since it really just sits there unless you drag the slider. You should check it out before you respond to my post. The problem with that flash program is that even when you are NOT dragging the slider, so the display is mostly static, the system becomes unresponsive, taking tens of seconds just to respond to a mouse click on the window close button.
On 12/22/2010 01:56 AM, John Williams wrote:
On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Gerry Reno <greno@verizon.net> wrote:
Full frame-rate video is one of the things that remote display technologies are not very good at. Imagine the volume of data that is trying to be pushed across the wire.
No, that is not the problem. I can actually watch a small video over x2go without bringing the system to its knees (i.e., the video plays without the system freezing or becoming unresponsive).
Actually, I probably should not call the universe scale thing a flash animation, since it really just sits there unless you drag the slider. You should check it out before you respond to my post. The problem with that flash program is that even when you are NOT dragging the slider, so the display is mostly static, the system becomes unresponsive, taking tens of seconds just to respond to a mouse click on the window close button.
What does 'top' on the Linux box say when you see this slowdown? It sounds like the browser is consuming all the CPU leaving little for x2go or other processes. And in that case it's probably a misbehaving flash plugin causing the problem.
Regards, Gerry
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Gerry Reno <greno@verizon.net> wrote:
What does 'top' on the Linux box say when you see this slowdown? It sounds like the browser is consuming all the CPU leaving little for x2go or other processes. And in that case it's probably a misbehaving flash plugin causing the problem.
plugin-container is using 70% of CPU, and x2goagent 30% of CPU.
But that only happens when I use x2go. If I access the page from linux directly, without x2go, everything is fine.
On 12/22/2010 01:36 PM, John Williams wrote:
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Gerry Reno <greno@verizon.net> wrote:
What does 'top' on the Linux box say when you see this slowdown? It sounds like the browser is consuming all the CPU leaving little for x2go or other processes. And in that case it's probably a misbehaving flash plugin causing the problem.
plugin-container is using 70% of CPU, and x2goagent 30% of CPU.
But that only happens when I use x2go. If I access the page from linux directly, without x2go, everything is fine.
Well, yes, it can appear fine when viewing natively because your local display has priority and so even when your browser is near 100% you will still have responsive display. What does 'top' show when you are viewing this natively? Does plugin-container still show 70%?
Regards, Gerry
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Gerry Reno <greno@verizon.net> wrote:
What does 'top' show when you are viewing this natively? Does plugin-container still show 70%?
plugin-container is at 180%, Xorg at 10%.
I have 8 CPU threads/cores on this machine, so there is still plenty of CPU available.
On 12/22/2010 02:13 PM, John Williams wrote:
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Gerry Reno <greno@verizon.net> wrote:
What does 'top' show when you are viewing this natively? Does plugin-container still show 70%?
plugin-container is at 180%, Xorg at 10%.
I have 8 CPU threads/cores on this machine, so there is still plenty of CPU available.
When I view this site it immediately pegs firefox at full cpu and I don't even have to touch the slider. As soon as I leave the page again it drops back down to 4%. The problem has something to do with the flash plugin.
Regards, Gerry
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Gerry Reno <greno@verizon.net> wrote:
When I view this site it immediately pegs firefox at full cpu and I don't even have to touch the slider. As soon as I leave the page again it drops back down to 4%. The problem has something to do with the flash plugin.
Well, I can see your point that it does not seem that much CPU should be consumed when the slider is not being dragged.
Nevertheless, the flash program works fine, from a user perspective, when I run it natively in X.
So I say the problem is related to using both the flash plugin and x2go at the same time.
On 12/22/2010 02:36 PM, John Williams wrote:
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Gerry Reno <greno@verizon.net> wrote:
When I view this site it immediately pegs firefox at full cpu and I don't even have to touch the slider. As soon as I leave the page again it drops back down to 4%. The problem has something to do with the flash plugin.
Well, I can see your point that it does not seem that much CPU should be consumed when the slider is not being dragged.
Nevertheless, the flash program works fine, from a user perspective, when I run it natively in X.
So I say the problem is related to using both the flash plugin and x2go at the same time.
I don't think so. I was doing this natively. x2go was nowhere in the picture.
As I was saying, when you view natively the kernel gives high priority to display, so although the browser is pegging the cpu you can still have a good user experience. When you access remotely using x2go all the processes involved in getting the remote display back to the client do not enjoy the same level of kernel priority I'm afraid and so they run slower and you notice this at the client.
Regards, Gerry
In my case, since I have 8 CPU threads / cores, unless the flash plugin is multi-threaded, I do not see how it can prevent x2go from getting the resources it needs. The flash plugin certainly does not appear to peg all 8 CPU threads at 100%. So it seems to me there should be enough resources left for x2go. There is plenty of spare CPU capacity for Xorg when I run the flash plugin natively. But it looked like x2go and the flash plugin were competing for resources from the same CPU thread. Hmmm.
On 12/22/2010 02:49 PM, John Williams wrote:
In my case, since I have 8 CPU threads / cores, unless the flash plugin is multi-threaded, I do not see how it can prevent x2go from getting the resources it needs. The flash plugin certainly does not appear to peg all 8 CPU threads at 100%. So it seems to me there should be enough resources left for x2go. There is plenty of spare CPU capacity for Xorg when I run the flash plugin natively. But it looked like x2go and the flash plugin were competing for resources from the same CPU thread. Hmmm.
I'd be willing to bet that your kernel is not taking full advantage of all your cores. Or that cores have been pinned in some way.
Regards, Gerry
Good news! Gerry, you convinced me that the flash plugin was the place to look to fix the problem. It turns out that firefox was seeing two versions of the flashplugin, and even though one was disabled according to the firefox add-ons/plugins dialog box, it seemed to cause issues for x2go. I uninstalled, the old plugin completely (deleted its libflashplayer.so), and kept the other one (which happened to be the most recent version, 10.1r102). Now the flash program runs properly via x2go!
Thanks, Gerry!
By the way, you said that the flash plugin pegged your CPU. Were you still able to view the flash program, and slide the slider to see the various scales? It works fine for me now, both natively and in x2go.
On 12/22/2010 03:17 PM, John Williams wrote:
Good news! Gerry, you convinced me that the flash plugin was the place to look to fix the problem. It turns out that firefox was seeing two versions of the flashplugin, and even though one was disabled according to the firefox add-ons/plugins dialog box, it seemed to cause issues for x2go. I uninstalled, the old plugin completely (deleted its libflashplayer.so), and kept the other one (which happened to be the most recent version, 10.1r102). Now the flash program runs properly via x2go!
Thanks, Gerry!
By the way, you said that the flash plugin pegged your CPU. Were you still able to view the flash program, and slide the slider to see the various scales? It works fine for me now, both natively and in x2go.
Yes, I had no problem viewing the flash program. It ran smoothly including using the slider. The cpu was pegged but the experience was still good.
Regards, Gerry
By the way, has anyone else tried clicking on the link from my first post, while accessing firefox via x2go? Does it work for you?
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Gerry Reno -
John Williams