Hi!

Haven't been using Digikam in a few month and a few days ago I noticed that it has become so slow that it is almost unusable. There has been quite a few updates since it was fast so I have absolutely no idea what may have caused this.

When I clicking on an album folder, containing a few pictures, Digikam uses 3 or 4 of my 8 logical CPU's for several seconds during which time it is unresponsive. I have 8 GB of memory with a 35% usage.

Output of top -b|grep digikam:

Code: Select all

 6851 gugrim    20   0 3221m 424m  72m S  0.0  5.3   6:10.50 digikam
 7482 gugrim    20   0  540m  25m  16m S  0.0  0.3   0:00.11 kio_digikamalbu
 6851 gugrim    20   0 3221m 424m  72m R 10.6  5.3   6:10.82 digikam
 7482 gugrim    20   0  540m  25m  16m S  0.0  0.3   0:00.11 kio_digikamalbu
 6851 gugrim    20   0 3221m 424m  72m R 90.4  5.3   6:13.54 digikam
 7482 gugrim    20   0  540m  25m  16m S  0.0  0.3   0:00.11 kio_digikamalbu
 6851 gugrim    20   0 3221m 424m  72m R 83.5  5.3   6:16.05 digikam
 7529 gugrim    20   0  540m  25m  16m S  3.7  0.3   0:00.11 kio_digikamalbu
 7482 gugrim    20   0  540m  25m  16m S  0.0  0.3   0:00.11 kio_digikamalbu
 6851 gugrim    20   0 3221m 424m  72m R 90.7  5.3   6:18.78 digikam
 7529 gugrim    20   0  540m  25m  16m S  0.0  0.3   0:00.11 kio_digikamalbu
 6851 gugrim    20   0 3221m 424m  72m S 51.9  5.3   6:20.34 digikam
 7529 gugrim    20   0  540m  25m  16m S  0.0  0.3   0:00.11 kio_digikamalbu
 6851 gugrim    20   0 3221m 424m  72m S  0.0  5.3   6:20.34 digikam
 7529 gugrim    20   0  540m  25m  16m S  0.0  0.3   0:00.11 kio_digikamalbu
 6851 gugrim    20   0 3221m 424m  72m S  0.0  5.3   6:20.34 digikam


The above shows what happened when I clicked on an album folder with maybe 15 pictures. 10 seconds of high CPU usage.

I have tried migrating the database to MySQL but gained nothing in performance.

I'm running Digikam 3.2.0 on OpenSUSE 12.3 with KDE 4.10.5.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any hints?

TIA,
Gunnar

I'm running Digikam 3.3 and KDE 3.11beta with openSUSE 12.3

Haven't run Digikam for a while like you, open it up and select a folder and there is some activity and this is true for all my folders (which aren't that big) but it's just a few seconds or so and doesn't have an effect on the pc's responsiveness (dual core i3 cpu), next time I run Digikam loading folders is pretty instantaneous.

Have you tried as a new user? Would you loose much if you started Digikam from scratch by removing the db and ~/,kde4/share/config/digikamrc file and ~/,kde4/share/apps/digikam folder ?

Could you try removing the Digikam configuration and database (in case it has gotten bad entries in it somehow) or try to reproduce under a new user?
Also, is Gwenview able to view the folders in question without problem?

Gwenview has no problem with the folders. Before I tried removing the configuration I thought I'd try disabling the Kipi plugins I don't use, which seems to be all although I'm sure I will find that I use one or two from time to time. With no plugins enabled Digikam is fast again. If I ever find the culprit I'll post about it on this thread.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, i e configuration not module versions.

Okay - good to know. It is quite likely one of the plugins may have been performing web calls, or expensive operations to extract information concerning the image for various reasons. If you run into this problem again, it would be helpful to know which Kipi plugin is being abusive here, so it can be reported and fixed.

I have now done some experimenting and disabled and enabled a chunk of plugins, then half a chunk, etc, to find the culprit, restarting Digikam after every change.
It seems some, most or all of the Exporter plugins are problematic. With all plugins enabled except the ones with Exporter in their names, Digikam behaved as it should. It doesn't seem to matter which Exporter plugins are enabled, only how many.

Hope this helps,
Gunnar

Interesting observation. I would suggest filing a bug report at bugs.kde.org against kipi-plugins concerning this behaviour, noting the class of plugins which appears to cause the fault. The source of the fault is likely something shared by all of the plugins.

The KIPI plugins should not affect application performance and behaviour in this fashion.