Time Machine Growler Using 95%+ CPU

[rrm74001]

Time Machine Growler:

http://boredzo.org/time-machine-growler/

Keeps using 95%+ of my CPU (Pictured here, 99.7%):



I saw this post:

http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20437&p=120286#p120286

Which says:

The remedy is to upgrade to Growl 1.2b3 (taking care to run the included uninstallers first), then give the system log a day or two to roll over. Then TMG should be much faster.

But I have been running Growl 1.2 Final since the day it was released and I am still getting 95%+ CPU usage. This is keeping the fans on my MacBook Pro steady at 3,000+ RPM, even while it is idle (it should only be at 2,000 RPM when it is idle).

Any ideas?

[boredzo]

The only reason I've ever seen for TimeMachineGrowler to use so much CPU time is that you have a lot of messages in your system log. Growl before 1.2 was one application that logged a lot of messages; as I mentioned in that thread, VMWare is or was another.

So, open the Console, see what's spamming it, and kill it. Then, about 24 hours later, you should be able to run TimeMachineGrowler without it sitting on a processor core.

[rrm74001]

The only reason I've ever seen for TimeMachineGrowler to use so much CPU time is that you have a lot of messages in your system log. Growl before 1.2 was one application that logged a lot of messages; as I mentioned in that thread, VMWare is or was another.

So, open the Console, see what's spamming it, and kill it. Then, about 24 hours later, you should be able to run TimeMachineGrowler without it sitting on a processor core.

I am not exactly sure what I am looking for, but from what I can see, nothing is spamming it. Console is not reporting anything at all while I have it open. But CPU usage continues at 95%+.

[boredzo]

Console is not reporting anything at all while I have it open.

How many messages is it showing, and over what span of time?

Also, make sure you're looking at (and counting) All Messages, not just Console Messages. I'm not sure whether that option is visible by default; click on Show Log List if it isn't.

[rrm74001]

Console is not reporting anything at all while I have it open.

How many messages is it showing, and over what span of time?

Also, make sure you're looking at (and counting) All Messages, not just Console Messages. I'm not sure whether that option is visible by default; click on Show Log List if it isn't.

It looks like about 40 messages over the course of about 1 hour:

[boredzo]

And from that brief window into your system log, it looks like Firefox is responsible for most of them.

Might I suggest OmniWeb? ☺ (No Growl support, though, sadly.) Alternatively, Safari, with GrowlSafari for Growl support.

Whichever browser you try, I suggest you go without Firefox for a day and see how well TMG performs afterward.

[rrm74001]

And from that brief window into your system log, it looks like Firefox is responsible for most of them.

Might I suggest OmniWeb? ☺ (No Growl support, though, sadly.) Alternatively, Safari, with GrowlSafari for Growl support.

Whichever browser you try, I suggest you go without Firefox for a day and see how well TMG performs afterward.

Really? So Applications that have nothing to do with Time Machine can cause this problem?

Why does Time Machine Growler even care about anything other than Time Machine? To be honest, I would stop using Time Machine Growler before I would stop using Firefox.

I will give it a shot though. Thank you for your help! I will post in a day or two and report on if switching browsers for a while helps.

[boredzo]

And from that brief window into your system log, it looks like Firefox is responsible for most of them.

Really? So Applications that have nothing to do with Time Machine can cause this problem?

Yes. Anything at all that puts a lot of the messages into the system log will slow down anything that searches the system log.

Why does Time Machine Growler even care about anything other than Time Machine?

It doesn't. It searches for only messages from backupd (the background process that performs Time Machine backups).

But in order to search for messages from backupd, it (more precisely, the Apple System Logger library) has to examine every message in the log, to determine which ones are from backupd (and are, therefore, messages TMG cares about) and which ones aren't. If you have a lot of messages, that takes several seconds per search. And TMG searches every ten seconds.

[rrm74001]

I am am not sure why, but it looks like Time Machine Growler is running just fine for me now. I am not sure what is different now though. It looks like it still spikes to about 10%, which is still undesired, but at least my fans do not go crazy because of it.



Thank you for your help, boredzo!

P.S. Any chance of this going 64 bit?

[boredzo]

I am am not sure why, but it looks like Time Machine Growler is running just fine for me now. I am not sure what is different now though.

You have fewer messages in the system log. Messages die off after about a day.

P.S. Any chance of this going 64 bit?

Until Apple introduces 64-bit-only Macs or a 64-bit-only Mac OS X, there's no reason to.