RAM being occupied by Akonadi and it's sister processes

[DarthMedicus]

So the other day I powered up my laptop into Kubuntu for the first time in a few weeks, and noticed something odd: Sluggish responses to everything I tried to do, including the start-up itself. When I looked in the system activity monitor I noticed that there were multiple instances of Akonadi, each of which were using over 100 megs of memory. After killing the process multiple times, it finally goes away so that I could move on to finding out what's wrong. Here's what I've done so far (after searching around on the internet and these forums) to try and mitigate the problem:

- I went into System Settings>Desktop Search>disabled Nepomuk Semantic Desktop

- Uninstalled Kmail, Kontact, and a couple of other packages that I had read depended on Akonadi (I don't remember which forum/site I got this one from)

- I also hit Alt-f2, clicked on the wrench, scrolled down in the Plugins pane, and disabled Nepomuk Desktop Search Runner.

So far, I have not been able to stop the instances of Akonadi eating up my RAM from occurring. So now I turn to the community to see if anyone has any insight to help out. Thanks in advance!

-DM

[dequire]

Hello. You might try installing the package kubuntu-low-fat-settings and see if that helps.

http://www.thebluemint.net/2011/10/k...-settings.html

[DarthMedicus]

Thanks, dequire, I'll give it a try and let you know how it went.

[DarthMedicus]

Well, I tried Kubuntu-low-fat-settings, with no change. Akonadi is still eating up my RAM upon start-up and will not stop until I manually kill it. I do appreciate being pointed that way, however. :-)

[woodsmoke]

Hi
One does not have to "uninstall" anything. All of the applications, except an IMAP, POP mail account will use the normal file system for searches etc.

In Menu/System settings/Personal Informaion go to Akonadi Resources Configuration, it will be the default window, and click on, to highlight, all of the "resources", one at a time, except "local folders" and then use the Remove button to remove the resources.

One can get all of the resources back by merely using the add button.

The Local Folders can be used by another mail client or by MailDir. And, if there is nothing in "local folders" then Akonadi/Nepomuk/Strigi is not going to spend but a second of time on them.

As to the sluggish performance at startup, back arrow to System Settings and go to Workspace Appearance and Behavior / Desktop Search.

Jumping ahead but not doing anything with it, if one goes to Advanced Settings tab one will see a slider. The simple cut to the chase is that the farther that the slider is to the right, the faster that the indexing will occur and the more RAM sticks of physical memory the better.

But, getting back to the problem at hand, one can go to the Desktop Query and one will see two important things, one is a long radio button that should say "Ignore all removeable media". That should be left alone or the indexing time will increase greatly, for the same reason that it take a long time to move a lot of files from a full USB stick: flowthrough of data.

The more important consideration is "Customize Index Folders". The default is "computer name" folder to be checked and all of the sub-folders. That includes a LOT of subfolders, because the assumption is that one will, at some time, want to find that particular voice recording that one made three years ago. (Akonadi includes ALL folders under "computer name". So, if one has a lot of miscellaneous stuff in folders from three years ago then Akonadi is going to indext them unless one tells Akonadi to not so do.

If one limits the ticked folders to say....documents.....then the indexing occurs much more rapidly.

But, again, back to the problem. The more important tab at this juncture is "Basic Settings".

There are three options, the top one if ticked then allows one to tick either of the lower ones, if it is UNticked then both of the lower ones are disabled.

UNtick the top radio button: Nepomuk Semantic Desktop enables.....Search".

It will not startup at bootup and the problem goes away.

However, at any time one can re-enable the search by ticking the radio button.

Possibly when one leaves to go to work or to beddy-bye.... let Strigi churn away and no fault no foul.

Again, Kontact, Koffice, Amarok, none of these apps "need" any of the Akonadi services, with the exception of Kontact....and then only if one is going to pull mail and calendar stuff from a web based service and that one particularly uses Akonadi to do that.

For the experienced user, who uses a server/internet to pull and push mail to "Mail dir" then local folders is defaulted to that.

Hope this helps a little bit, if there are questions then I am sure that someone more experienced in such matters will pop in to help.

woodsmoke

[DarthMedicus]

Hey Woodsmoke,

Thanks for responding and providing some info. I followed the points you laid out to see what would happen. After I reinitialized Akonadi to follow the first step, it immediately reproduced itself in terms of the number of instances, and each eating about 120 megs. I was able to remove all of the resources before my system was basically forced to a crawl as those instances took more and more RAM.

I eventually killed off (manually) those instances so that I could get the rest of the steps completed. I logged off and logged back in, and at first everything looked good. Then I noticed the increasing drag, so I opened the system activity monitor to see what was going on, now. I observed the following process sucking up massive amounts of RAM: akonadi_maildispatch_agent.

It had gotten up to 1.3G before I was finally able to get enough response out of the mouse to kill that process. After repeating the log-off procedure, I got the same results, with other akonadi instances joining in on the fun. I reproduced the same issue with a restart, as well as a cold boot from a total shutdown.

As I had mentioned in the OP, this is something totally new that I had never seen before while using Kubuntu. So, for now, I have to manually kill the akonadi process to be able to do anything on my laptop. Any other tips, tricks or solutions that you or anyone can help me out with would be greatly appreciated, and again, thank you, woodsmoke.

-DM

[oshunluvr]

You can remove virtuoso and kdepim-runtime packages (unfortunatly due to dependances you cannot safely remove akonadi...):

Next, disable Nepomuk and Strigi:

System Settings -> Desktop Search -> Uncheck both Nepomuk and Strigi check boxes -> Click Apply

Disable Akonadi (This is done per-user):

edit ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc

Change the following line:

StartServer=true
to:
StartServer=false

Also if you want to try tweaking your system furthur try going into the KDE Services Configuration and disable some stuff:

System Settings -> Startup and Shutdown -> Service ManagerUncheck and stop the following at a minimum depending on your configuration:

• Nepomuk Search Module

Click Apply.

[DarthMedicus]

You can remove virtuoso and kdepim-runtime packages (unfortunatly due to dependances you cannot safely remove akonadi...):

Next, disable Nepomuk and Strigi:

System Settings -> Desktop Search -> Uncheck both Nepomuk and Strigi check boxes -> Click Apply

Disable Akonadi (This is done per-user):

edit ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc

Change the following line:

StartServer=true
to:
StartServer=false

Also if you want to try tweaking your system furthur try going into the KDE Services Configuration and disable some stuff:

System Settings -> Startup and Shutdown -> Service ManagerUncheck and stop the following at a minimum depending on your configuration:

• Nepomuk Search Module

Click Apply.

Well, I was able to remove the two packages that you have mentioned: virtuoso & kdepim-runtime; nepomuk and strigi were not showing as enabled in system settings; I tried to edit ~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc, but it kept showing up as a new file (nothing to edit); and the nepomuk search module was showing as disabled.

The end result was that apparently kdepim-runtime took my kubuntu desktop and a bunch of other kde items with it. :-(

-DM




UPDATE: I was able to reinstall my Kubuntu Desktop via command line, but am now left with the original issue of akonadi_maildispatcher_agent hogging up as much as 1.3G in RAM. For now, I guess I'll do my best to kill off the process in System Monitor before moving on to anything else when I start-up my laptop.

[oshunluvr]

Hmm, sorry about that. Must be a change from 11.04 to 11.10. The only required package on my system is kdepimlibs-kio-plugins. As far as the akonadiserverrc I know that 11.10 uses that file. I can't imagine why your system doesn't have it.

http://userbase.kde.org/Akonadi#High...r_Memory_usage

[DarthMedicus]

Not a problem, oshunlulvr. We gotta try everything we can, right? :-)

This might help, as I went to the link you provided and tried to see something. This is the output of

akonadictl status

:

@DarthMedicus:/home/omar-fara# akonadictl status
D-Bus session bus is not available!
"[
0: akonadictl(_Z11akBacktracev+0x35) [0x805ddb5]
1: akonadictl() [0x805e181]
2: [0x285400]
3: [0x285416]
4: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(gsignal+0x4f) [0x317c8f]
5: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(abort+0x175) [0x31b2b5]
6: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libQtCore.so.4(_Z17qt_message_output9QtMsgTypePKc+0x136) [0xbf04a6]
7: akonadictl(_ZN15FileDebugStream9writeDataEPKcx+0xd8) [0x805d288]
8: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libQtCore.so.4(_ZN9QIODevice5writeEPKcx+0xc9) [0xc8a119]
9: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libQtCore.so.4(+0x104ec7) [0xc93ec7]
10: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libQtCore.so.4(_ZN11QTextStreamD1Ev+0x3e) [0xc9d98e]
11: akonadictl(_ZN13AkApplication4initEv+0x109) [0x8056149]
12: akonadictl(main+0x84) [0x8051614]
13: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf3) [0x303113]
14: akonadictl() [0x8053371]
]
"

[oshunluvr]

Ok, weird: here's what I got from the same command...

stuart@office:~$ akonadictl status
Akonadi Control: running
Akonadi Server: running
Akonadi Server Search Support: not available

remember, this is with the startserver=false edit.

Turns out the server is still running! I killed it manually, but odd that it was still up. I rarely reboot so likely it was because I haven't rebooted since the edit.

Back to your issue: it appears you have other issues, like dbus not running...

[oshunluvr]

Only things I can find relate to either mysql being trashed or an apparmor issue (which I don't have installed)

[r]

to stop akonadi server
right click akonadi tray icon, select stop server
and in akonadi server configuration untick use internal mysql server

to disable akonadi from autostarting
remove akonaditray.desktop from
/usr/share/autostart/

this is what i have done in my system to stop akonadi

[DarthMedicus]

@ oshunluvr - Well, I updated a few times, I when I ran akonadictl status, I got the same output (with stopped instead of running), but akonadi_maildispatcher still popped up at start-up an racing me for the RAM eating championship, so I tried the solution that 'r' suggested...

@ r - I tried what you did, and I was able to restart multiple times without akonadi_maildispatcher showing its ugly mug in my system resources. Thank you!

And thank you to everyone who responded with suggestions, pointers, and links. I really do appreciate the time and effort you put in!

-DM