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[Bug 1430620] Re: gnome-terminal writes excessively to /tmp (affecting SSD drives)

To: desktop-packages@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Egmont Koblinger <egmont@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:58:03 -0000
Reply-to: Bug 1430620 <1430620@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sender: bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
After 1 week of usage, my gnome-terminals have written a total of 48 MB.
Out of this, about 40 MB was cating my favorite test file 4 times for
speed measurement purposes, and the remaining about 8 MB was the normal
tasks I performed, including management of several remote servers via
ssh, compilation of several applications over and over again, and a
complete dist-upgrade to Vivid alpha (not in screen as it's done by
default, but actually writing to the terminal's scrollback) and dist-
upgrading again a few times.

Assuming 75 TB lifetime as mentioned in comment 3 (which is about 1/10
of the actual lifetime measured in this stress-test:
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-
all-dead), I would have to keep this usage pattern for 30 years and then
it'd cause 0.1% of the SSD wear-out.

Of course your usage patterns might differ significantly and result in
magnitudes higher numbers; let me know if that's the case.

Note: resizing with rewrapping is an issue, if you do it with a large
scrollback then it produces a lot of output, it writes quicker than upon
normal operation. This might be a concern; a workaround could be to
disable rewrapping on resize, using a relatively small scrollback
buffer, or disabling opaque resize in the WM. (The data is in the
ballpark of 5–10 bytes per line on each resize, i.e. probably less than
1 MB if you have 100.000 lines. The real problem is that most WMs send
many resize events during a manual resize.)

In the mean time, I've done a proof of concept in the upstream bug to
store the scrollback in memory, and I'm planning to make it a mainstream
feature.

-- 
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1430620

Title:
  gnome-terminal writes excessively to /tmp (affecting SSD drives)

Status in vte package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  1) In a gnome-terminal run "sudo fatrace -f W -t" (filter for writes plus timestamps).
  2) In another window cat a file to the screen.
  3) Observe the activity.  I see large churn on the /tmp partitition:

  20:41:24.158837 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.158837 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.159268 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.159268 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.159674 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.159674 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.160171 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.160171 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.160603 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.160603 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.160919 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.160919 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.161093 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.161093 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.161545 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.161545 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.161999 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.161999 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.162447 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.162447 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.162825 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.162825 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.162899 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.162899 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.163366 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.163366 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.163817 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.163817 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.164331 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.164331 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.164729 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.164729 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.164729 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.164729 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.165219 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.165219 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.165674 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.165674 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.166128 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.166128 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.166587 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.166587 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.166660 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.166660 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.167056 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.167056 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.167529 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.167529 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.167949 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.167949 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.168451 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.168451 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.168524 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.168524 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.168889 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.168889 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.169364 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.169364 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.169808 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.169808 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.170281 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.170281 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.170354 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.170354 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.170744 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.170744 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.171222 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.171222 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.171699 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.171699 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.172114 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.172114 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.172298 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.172298 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.172617 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.172617 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.173055 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.173055 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.173528 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.173528 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.173997 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.173997 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.174286 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.174286 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.174470 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.174470 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.174908 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.174908 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.175387 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.175387 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.175808 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.175808 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.176240 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.176240 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.176240 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.176240 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.176752 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.176752 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.177217 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.177217 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.177659 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.177659 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.178119 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.178119 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.178119 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.178119 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132835 (deleted)
  20:41:24.178584 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.178584 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.179053 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.179053 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132828 (deleted)
  20:41:24.184620 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:41:24.184620 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:41:24.196022 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132753 (deleted)
  20:41:24.196022 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132753 (deleted)
  20:41:24.196022 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:41:24.196022 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:41:24.196503 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:41:24.196503 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132355 (deleted)

  Related, but not the same:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vte/+bug/865082?comments=all

  The excessive churn eventually gets flushed to disk, affecting the
  lifetime of SSD drives.

  
  Normal gnome terminal operation (no cat) results in endless streams of:
  20:44:25.107540 gnome-terminal(23352): RW /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:44:25.138015 gnome-terminal(23352): RW /tmp/#132753 (deleted)
  20:44:25.138015 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132753 (deleted)
  20:44:25.138108 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:44:25.138108 gnome-terminal(23352): RW /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:44:25.168764 gnome-terminal(23352): RW /tmp/#132355 (deleted)
  20:44:25.168764 gnome-terminal(23352): RW /tmp/#132753 (deleted)
  20:44:25.168764 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132753 (deleted)
  20:44:25.168764 gnome-terminal(23352): W /tmp/#132355 (deleted)

  
  132753 is NOT the process number of the gnome-terminal.

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References

[Bug 1430620] [NEW] gnome-terminal writes excessively to /tmp (affecting SSD drives)
From: Bryce Nesbitt, 2015-03-11