ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Jim Hodapp <jim.hodapp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 10:26 AM, Andrea Bernabei <
andrea.bernabei@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Sergio Schvezov <
> sergio.schvezov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 9:31 AM, Alan Pope <alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jim,
>>>
>>> On 8 September 2015 at 13:24, Jim Hodapp <jim.hodapp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> wrote:
>>> > Or couldn't we just deprioritize apport as a process so that it can't
>>> use up
>>> > all of the CPU and truly make it a background task. Is there any
>>> reason why
>>> > apport would need normal priority while running?
>>> >
>>>
>>> The result could be worse.
>>>
>>> If for example Unity8/Mir crashes, then while apport does its business
>>> the shell isn't available (obviously, as it's just crashed) and
>>> doesn't restart until after apport is done. This likely results in the
>>> user seeing longer periods of "lock up" and will more likely reboot
>>> the device (the only remedial measure they can take) almost certainly
>>> resulting in an unusable crash dump, leading to us having no way to
>>> determine the reason for the initial crash.
>>>
>>>
>>
> I think we should at the very least warn the user that the phone is
> uploading crash reports or generating core dumps, so that he at least knows
> we're slowing down the system on purpose.
>

I completely disagree. This is a technical detail that I believe should be
hidden from the user. Your average user will have no clue what a crash
report is. I would say that if we can't actually report a crash in the
background without taking up all of the spare CPU cycles, then this process
is broken. Perhaps apport just isn't suited for mobile yet and needs to be
fixed so that it doesn't peg the CPU and to popey's feedback, doesn't block
the shell from starting again until after apport has finished. That would
be the ideal user interaction - crash reports just happen in the background
and the user can't tell performance-wise that it's even occurring.

Jim



>
> I would still think, though, that it makes more sense to get a few
> corrupted crash dumps than to lock every phone so often just because things
> fall apart.
>
>
>> I'm going to chime in my usual request of asking if apport could be run
>> only when plugged in to a power source :-) I currently have it disabled now
>> since it is a pain when on the go where I ended up manually power cycling
>> because it was faster and "I needed to make that call".
>>
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>>
>
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