[squeak-dev] squeak image sometimes takes very long to be responsive after XO suspend

Hey dear lists,

We at OLE Nepal have some trouble with squeak images coming out of XO suspend.

Basically when coming out of suspend, the Squeak process takes up lots
of cpu power and can be unresponsive for about a minute on build 703
(other builds not yet tested).

Also we loose sound. Which sometimes comes back after a while. Either
on it's own or perhaps because another application is opened. This
could be a coincidence though.

Especially the unresponsiveness is a problem, because it messes up the
classes. Typically a teacher will explain a concept after which the
students will do an activity for a short while. After which they will
close the XO again to go on with the rest of the course. The XO's
can't stay open because they are to distractive and because they eat
battery power, and perhaps take up to much space (the benches these
children work at are tiny). Having to either wait for the activity, or
restart the image (or XO, whatever the child feels comfortable with)
kills the flow, and the children get very impatient.

Any pointers to the cause and/or solutions would be greatly
appreciated. I'll add appropriate tickets to trac shortly.

/Ties

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 1:50 PM, Ties Stuij <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Basically when coming out of suspend, the Squeak process takes up lots
> of cpu power and can be unresponsive for about a minute on build 703
> (other builds not yet tested).

What about:

- launch etoys
- check its pid
- attach to it with strace -p PID and log the output to a file
- suspend
- resume
- check what etoys is doing in that file

Good luck,

Tomeu

> Basically when coming out of suspend, the Squeak process takes up lots
> of cpu power and can be unresponsive for about a minute on build 703
> (other builds not yet tested).

  Hmm.  Interestingly, windows VM has similar problem.  If you suspend
Windows with Squeak running, resuming takes long time, and you have to
"send" a lot of user events by moving mouse a lot.

> Also we loose sound. Which sometimes comes back after a while. Either
> on it's own or perhaps because another application is opened. This
> could be a coincidence though.

  This is bad, too.  I wonder a button that calls:

  SoundPlayer shutDown.
  SoundPlayer startUp.

and press it when the symptom occurs resets it or not.

> Especially the unresponsiveness is a problem, because it messes up the
> classes. Typically a teacher will explain a concept after which the
> students will do an activity for a short while. After which they will
> close the XO again to go on with the rest of the course. The XO's
> can't stay open because they are to distractive and because they eat
> battery power, and perhaps take up to much space (the benches these
> children work at are tiny). Having to either wait for the activity, or
> restart the image (or XO, whatever the child feels comfortable with)
> kills the flow, and the children get very impatient.

  This should be fixed, yes.  We should try strace'ing Tomeu
suggested, and possibly we even should investigated the situation on
Windows.

  Thank you for reporting.

-- Yoshiki

  Tomeu and all,

At Fri, 16 May 2008 13:53:16 +0200,
Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
  I'm now looking into this, but this may not be an issue with Etoys.
I did strace but don't really see any anomaly.  (Saw some interesting
things, but.)

  Suppose I start Pippy and run the "Lines" example, and press the
power button to suspend.  The laptop suspends and the power LED
blinks.  But, here is an interesting happens; if I rub the touch pad
quickly, or put my four fingers together on the keyboard (at shift,
ctrl, tab and `) and slide them over the keyboard to cause a lot of
key input (while the laptop is suspended), the the pattern of power
LED blinking changes.  The LED stays on for a while and turns to off,
and come back to on, etc.  If I press the power button while the
abnormal LED pattern is going, the button press is often ignored.  Or,
it wakes up one second or such but goes back to sleep.  If these
things happen, waking up the unit takes time.  Etoys doesn't have to
be running.

  When Etoys is running, but you don't touch the laptop while it is
suspended, it doesn't happen (that often).

  This is on a G1G1 machine, update.1-708 with the firmware that comes
with it.  I created a track ticket (#7196).

-- Yoshiki

  I forgot to mention one thing.  So, Ties, you might be already doing
this, but one workaround for the problem is to instruct kids not to
touch the keys or touchpad when the unit is suspended...

-- Yoshiki

Yes, I've noticed this behavior to. However, we're experiencing other
problems I believe. In our case the XO comes out of suspend:The etoys
screen comes up, we can get to other activities... however a glance at
top reveals that Squeak consumes almost all processing power on the
XO.

/Ties

Yes, I've noticed this behavior to. However, we're experiencing other
problems I believe. In our case the XO comes out of suspend:The etoys
screen comes up, we can get to other activities... however a glance at
top reveals that Squeak consumes almost all processing power on the
XO.

/Ties