ubuntuone sync daemon is writing IDLE messages to the log every 2 minutes

Example of IDLE messages that appear EVERY two minutes in /home/$user/.cache/ubuntuone/one/syncdaemon.log

syncdaemon has a config option in syncdaemon.conf "mark_interval.default" which is set to 120, and ubuntuone/syncdaemon/main.py also has a hardcoded 120 second default.

ubuntuone-syncdaemon has a --mark_interval=MARK_INTERVAL method, which developers could use to get this effect without having to change system configuration files. This seems good enough for debugging, and it's not really necessary to do this for all users.

Ubuntu One devs, are you ok with disabling the MARK logging by default and only enable it on demand? It seems relatively pointless, the log will already tell you when its started, and apport will pick up crashes.

I'm happy to work on a patch/branch, but would like to confirm the general approach with upstream first.

The MARK interval is *VERY* useful for debugging; we had far more complaints of SyncDaemon misbehaviour (real ones and mistakingly seen by the users as such) where the MARK line is useful, than complaints about the line being logged.

Note that the MARK log line gives a lot of information: syncdaemon state, connection state (system and user indicated ones), and hash and request queues length.

I'm -1 to removing this line from the logs.

Question: why logging every two minutes prevents the machine from going to sleep? Maybe we could increase this time?

The fact that users aren't complaining about the line being logged doesn't mean it's not unwanted - users just don't know about it. We do get users complaining a lot about power consumption issues, and things like logs periodically being updated will keep the disk from going into an idle state.

So.. perhaps can we either flush out the log less frequently, or even only flush out when we really have an issue or on close? If the user is seeing problems can one inform them to enable more frequently logging for the debugging session?

After a conversation with Roberto Alsina and Facundo Batista, we agreed that:

(05:32:54 PM) ralsina: we could make it much more rare
(05:32:59 PM) ralsina: like, every 15 minutes
(05:33:17 PM) ralsina: which is Colin's suggestion (although I don see any suggested periods)
(05:33:47 PM) ralsina: facundobatista: is it horrible if we get this info every 15 minutes instead of 2?
(05:39:37 PM) facundobatista: ralsina, why 15 minutes?
(05:39:52 PM) facundobatista: ralsina, why not 5? or 10? or 30?
(05:40:03 PM) ralsina: facundobatista: default time to suspend
(05:40:29 PM) ralsina: facundobatista: of course I should doublecheck, but I think the default is to suspend after 15 minutes idle on battery
(05:41:45 PM) facundobatista: ralsina, I'm ok with 15'

Colin, would you please confirm if having a MARK every 15 minutes will consider this bug solved?

Thanks!

Well, every 15 minutes is definitely better than every 2 minutes, so yep, lets go with that as a compromise. Thanks!

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntuone-client - 2.99.90-0ubuntu1

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ubuntuone-client (2.99.90-0ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
    - Messaging menu opens GTK+ panel instead of Qt. (LP: #943439)
    - u1sdtool opens registration screen instead of login. (LP: #944230)
    - Sync daemon writes IDLE messages to log every 2 mins. (LP: #906462)
    - Should prefer the Qt SSO interface for authentication. (LP: #930716)
    - New shares do not appear in messaging indicator. (LP: #943473)
    - Dependency on indicator must not be obligatory. (LP: #939509)
  * debian/watch:
    - Update watch file for new release.
  * debian/control:
    - Update dependencies for listed bug fixes.
    - Bump standards version to 3.9.9.
 -- Rodney Dawes <email address hidden> Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:44:38 -0500

you need to close the bug in ubuntu power consumption project too