Xfce-4 battery monitor using too much cpu

added upstream bug

xfce4-battery-plugin (0.5.0-3ubuntu1) hardy; urgency=low

  * Merge from debian unstable, remaining changes:
    - debian/rules: use our xfce.mk class
    - bump debhelper compat to 5
    - adhere to DebianMaintainerField.
  * debian/control:
    - Updated Maintainer field to Xubuntu Developers
  * debian/patches/05_fix-2.6.24.patch:
    - Fixed FTBFS. This patch can be dropped on next kernel upload (hopefully)
  * Closed LP: #113440

xfce4-battery-plugin (0.5.0-3) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Simon Huggins ]
  * debian/control: Move fake Homepage field to a real one now dpkg
    supports it.
  * Add Vcs-* headers to debian/control

  [ Yves-Alexis Perez ]
  * debian/patches
    - 04_use-sysfs: use sysfs interface if available.
    - 03_lower-acpi-polling: don't refresh acpi system too often.
  * debian/control:
    - update email address.
    - updated standards to 3.7.3.

 -- <email address hidden> (Cody A.W. Somerville) Sun, 09 Dec 2007 09:44:25 +0000

> I had been monitoring cpu usage and every 1 sec, my cpu usage % would spike to 70-80%, I ran a "top" and located the spike.... Xfce-4 battery -p. The battery monitor is just really sucking alot of cpu usage for such a small app.

CPU usage can disturb other applications, but when it comes to what kind of behavior drains battery most (once kernel uses dynticks and can make HW to sleep when it's not used), it's how often something wakes and how long.

For example SDL programs might look completely idle when they are not doing anything (use 0% CPU according to top), but in reality they are are polling the system (very quickly) several times a second.

In this case I think the main problem is that the thing wakes up once a sec. Battery state doesn't change that fast and plugging in a charger could/should send an event about it...

Hi Eero,

 As you can see, this bug is marked Fix Released. Is this problem still
occurring on Hardy Alpha 2?

On Dec 22, 2007 6:40 AM, Eero Tamminen <email address hidden> wrote:

> > I had been monitoring cpu usage and every 1 sec, my cpu usage % would
> spike to 70-80%, I ran a "top" and located the spike.... Xfce-4 battery
> -p. The battery monitor is just really sucking alot of cpu usage for
> such a small app.
>
> CPU usage can disturb other applications, but when it comes to what kind
> of behavior drains battery most (once kernel uses dynticks and can make
> HW to sleep when it's not used), it's how often something wakes and how
> long.
>
> For example SDL programs might look completely idle when they are not
> doing anything (use 0% CPU according to top), but in reality they are
> are polling the system (very quickly) several times a second.
>
> In this case I think the main problem is that the thing wakes up once a
> sec. Battery state doesn't change that fast and plugging in a charger
> could/should send an event about it...
>
> --
> Xfce-4 battery monitor using too much cpu
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/113440
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Xubuntu
> Team, which is a bug contact for xfce4-battery-plugin in ubuntu.
>

--
Cody A.W. Somerville

Seems fixed in Hardy final. I can't confirm this problem with the final Xubuntu release version.