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[Petar Velkovski <pvelkovski@xxxxxxxxx>]

I would like to add that I don't think that the original bug reported
with this bug report, is identical with the way this gvfs-metadata bug
behaves in its later version as running rm -rf ~/.local/share/gvfs-
metadata stops the infinite disk writing for just  few minutes and that
it starts again. Not only does it put the HDD under a strain (especially
SSDs), it also kills the battery on laptop devices quicker especially
when an ordinary HDD is used.

The finding that the bug is easily reproducible with the Super Start
firefox extension is interesting. I'm using a similar extension on both
my machines where this bug appears; it's Speed DIal [FWD] in my case.
Some previous bug reports mention that the bug is triggered when using
HTML5 Video Everywhere - another firefox plugin.

Is it possible that some of the libraries used by firefox produce files
(or do something else) that than somehow confuse gvfs-metadata and force
it to go into infinite writing loop?! If so, can this be also a firefox
bug? Not that gvfs-metadata shouldn't be able to handle such situations.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/517021

Title:
  gvfsd-metadata causes 100% CPU usage

Status in gvfs package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in gvfs package in Debian:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: gvfs

  Failure to write metadata results in an infinite loop that keeps
  trying to write, thousands of times per second.

  Steps to reproduce:
  1. Open Firefox
  2. Save a data: URL (URL that contains the content, with several thousands bytes, often generated by webapps or extensions) as file

  (There are other ways to run into this problem, e.g. disk full or
  other error situations. data: URLs are just the easiest way to
  reproduce.)

  Actual result:
  - File is saved
  - 100% CPU
  - Extremely high number of file operations by gvfs - billions
  - Never stops

  Expected result:
  Failure to write metadata should just fail, not try again

  Fix:
  Patch available and accepted by GNOME
  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=637095

  --- Original description ---
  After installing 9.10 Ubuntu 64bit browsing and opening folder in nautilus or Gnome-commander take several minutes when there are many files in it e.g. 10.000. Interestingly Midnight-commander does not have this problem. Opening such folders does not hang with MC.
  Using "top" i can see that "gvfsd-metadata" is using 100% CPU and when i kill it the computer stops "hanging". I am using the 32bit version of Karmic too and there is no such Problem (although tested on a different computer).

  Please fix this because it is highly annyoing. Right now i am killing
  it every 20s with the watch command to be able to work at all.

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