What's wrong with my WebAppMgr?

[ToniCipriani]

This is starting to get annoying. The frequency that I have to reboot my phone to recover is starting to increase again, almost every two days I need to do a reset, all thanks to WebAppMgr. I can reboot my phone, have it start off around 200MB, then shoot up to 450MB and eat up all my physical memory, and the phone becomes slow as molasses, even trying to get it out of sleep can have a huge lag. I really don't think I have a lot of cards open, just Music Player and Messaging, plus Weather Dashboard running in the background. I can then throw away all my cards but WebAppMgr will still remain at like 400MB, even after all the cards are open. Only way out is a Luna reset.

Should I just doctor and start over? Is something terribly wrong?

[ShiftyAxel]

I've heard about memory leak issues with WebAppMgr before, you could try installing JSTop and enabling it's Auto Garbage Collection feature, that might help. Do you have a custom kernel installed?

[ToniCipriani]

Originally Posted by ShiftyAxel

I've heard about memory leak issues with WebAppMgr before, you could try installing JSTop and enabling it's Auto Garbage Collection feature, that might help. Do you have a custom kernel installed?

Yes, Uberkernel.

[ShiftyAxel]

Hmm, Uber has memory optimizations IIRC so it shouldn't be an issue... You could try running for a few days without Weather Dashboard and see if that helps, it may be an app-centric leak.

[ToniCipriani]

I'll give that a try. While I'm at it I'll disable auto updates for Feedreader as well.

[ToniCipriani]

Installed JSTop, stopped FeedReader and WeatherDashboard. I've been monitoring the usage closely, it's not even full yet my phone still went to a grinding halt. The GC didn't help much.

It seems like the worst offender is actually the Music Player and the Messaging themselves. Leave them on and it'll send WebAppMgr into the 400s and won't bring it back until a reboot.

Strange thing is, this never happened when I was using my Veer.

[ShiftyAxel]

Sounds a lot like what I had with my original Pre, if I left certain ones open it would slow to a crawl. Though that might have just been the Pre being the Pre tbh...
Oh btw, what version of webOS are you running?

[ToniCipriani]

Originally Posted by ShiftyAxel

Sounds a lot like what I had with my original Pre, if I left certain ones open it would slow to a crawl. Though that might have just been the Pre being the Pre tbh...
Oh btw, what version of webOS are you running?

2.2.4, OTA'ed from 2.2.3.

It was certainly a lot better already from 2.2.3 though, my music would go completely choppy. Now I still here pops, which I think it's all related.

[ShiftyAxel]

Hmm, I wonder if it's the OTA that could have caused it. I'm often wary of updating like that, doctoring every time for me. I used to get poppy, skippy music too, reckon it might be a dirty headphone jack since it occasionally ignores the fact that I just plugged headphones in. Upgraded to a new set of cans and the lags and skips went away, though my old headphones were a bit battered.
[/ramble]

[qlearner]

You may want to install 'Preset Reset' and schedule a reboot @3am everyday.

Good Luck.

[ToniCipriani]

Originally Posted by ShiftyAxel

Hmm, I wonder if it's the OTA that could have caused it. I'm often wary of updating like that, doctoring every time for me. I used to get poppy, skippy music too, reckon it might be a dirty headphone jack since it occasionally ignores the fact that I just plugged headphones in. Upgraded to a new set of cans and the lags and skips went away, though my old headphones were a bit battered.
[/ramble]

It's definitely not the jack. When there's no signal (e.g. when I'm on the subway) there is no skip or anything. Also does NOT occur when I play videos. I also only sparingly get the headphone jack issue when plugging in and it doesn't detect I have headphones plugged, but removing the headphones always works and pause music properly.

I think I'll try a doctor... maybe over the weekend.

[jcmarcos]

I've been suffering unexpectedly high battery drain lately too. Yesterday, for example, my Pre3 was working as usual, when it reached 20% level. Then, in less than an hour, the battery plundered to zero!

I thought the Synergy Messaging Plugin 0.9.3 was to blame, and I removed it completely, but it wasn't the case. Moreso, its author confirmed that it's no different to the previous 0.9.2 version, with which I had no problems. Then, I thought that it might me the Exchange e-mail plugin, which I have connected to my Hotmail account, that started working again recently, after more than month of downtime, due to the fine folks at Microsoft changeing something at their servers.

So today, I fired up a "top" command through NovaTerm''s console, to see if I had some process running amok. But no, I just have the usual "WebAppMgr" pig, eating one third of my precious RAM and around 10% CPU, even if there's nothing going on: Not a single app open, just my Govnah friend, monitoring my device through A1 Skyrider kernel.

In all, it seems my problem indeed exists, but I don't know how to force it. Any ideas?

[bassman97]

Originally Posted by jcmarcos

Not a single app open, just my Govnah friend, monitoring my device through A1 Skyrider kernel.

It's a known issue that leaving Govnah open will start to suck the life out of your device w/ the constant polling.

For OP, I would check JSTop to see what apps are open. The only ones that should be are the ones that do updates (synergy apps, Facebook, etc.). I'd you something unusual, there's your suspect.

[jcmarcos]

Originally Posted by bassman97

leaving Govnah open will start to suck the life out of your device w/ the constant polling.

That much? I've been running Govnah constantly since ages. I know polling resources has a cost, but "top" had Govnah at the bottom of the list always, when it's not active, of course.

For OP, I would check JSTop to see what apps are open. The only ones that should be are the ones that do updates (synergy apps, Facebook, etc.). I'd you something unusual, there's your suspect.

Oh, thanks for the tip. I also have JSTop since ages too, and never payed much attention to it, just liked its auto cleanup system. I can see "Phone" (several times!), which is not visible, even things as "Camera", that I know for sure that hasn't been started since the last reboot. Why?

[bassman97]

Originally Posted by jcmarcos

That much? I've been running Govnah constantly since ages. I know polling resources has a cost, but "top" had Govnah at the bottom of the list always, when it's not active, of course.



Oh, thanks for the tip. I also have JSTop since ages too, and never payed much attention to it, just liked its auto cleanup system. I can see "Phone" (several times!), which is not visible, even things as "Camera", that I know for sure that hasn't been started since the last reboot. Why?

Do a search, you'll see that Govnah, although is great to keep track of your system, shouldn't be left to run in the background.

I meant the 2nd part for OP but for your instance, Camera is started by Luna during start-up (you can see it in Luna.conf). That, along with all the synergy apps (Calender, Contacts, etc.). I modified my Luna.conf so that Camera isn't launched at boot-up; stopping it hasn't resulted in any noticeable affects though it does free up some memory (camera still functions when called upon). I suspect it's loaded to ensure it opens faster by caching some resources. Through my experience, leave Phone alone. Killing one of the phone tasks will kill something else. You see it as that's the related services needed to answer phone calls, etc. Similarly, you'll see synergy related apps running as they in the background update your records during syncing.

[jcmarcos]

I'd like to ask one more question: The "top" command shows a certain "org.webosintern" process eating a substantial amount of processor time (much less than WebAppMgr, but this one is unavoidable). What can it be? Sure it's an incomplete name, is there any way to know where did it came from?

Also, while searching for my symptoms in the forum, I came to at least one thread, where people were suffering big battery drain just out of the air: The cell towers in their neighbourhood were updated somehow by the carrier, and now they were talking a confusing language for their devices, which made them struggle and drain more current.

I'm saying that because, either I'm getting paranoid, or I have high battery drain at my home, not away from it. Anyway, if this is the case, I'm doomed too (other than turn off cell data radio, but I've no WiFi at home) because nobody can update the device's radio firmware, to adapt it to the updated cell towers.

[jcmarcos]

Originally Posted by Wilburnter

it may be an app-centric leak

Nope, there isn't a single card open, just an idle webOS, with the ton of processes it needs, of course. And a single Hotmail account through the Exchange Synergy plugin. Oh, and Mode Switcher, but that's never been a resource hog. Does anyone know where did that "org.webosintern" procees came from?

I'm talking about a system that hasn't got anything new installed since many weeks, and yet its draining battery now. That's why I suspect about envoronmental changes, such as cell towers. If they are to blame, of course that's something that can NOT be visible in system processes, can it.

[ToniCipriani]

Well I recently did a doctor and went back to mostly stock. Too Many Cards came right back, but I'm starting to have a grasp on how to reproduce it.

Mostly, it seems like if you have a long playlist in music player and you're at a high number. Music starts skipping, and you can't open anything. Closing the card most of the time does NOT fix the issue, but a full reboot not necessary, just a Luna Restart (provided I can open Preware) does the trick.

So I think it's something to do with the mediaservice and WebAppMgr.

[jcmarcos]

Originally Posted by ToniCipriani

it seems like if you have a long playlist in music player and you're at a high number. Music starts skipping, and you can't open anything.

Interesting... I guess you mean the standard Music Player, which I haven't used in years, since Music Player Remix is available. Also, I don't have playlists with more than a dozen songs or so. Who knows, perhaps Remix shares that behaviour.

Now, back to my battery drain problem... What if I tell you that it seems to have gone away, doing nothing? Yesterday I didn't suffer any heavy drain in the afternoon. So, for now, my bet about cellular coverage problems at home is the most probable theory.

[ToniCipriani]

OK, so I did a little bit more digging, found out whenever audio goes choppy, it's it's the Linux memory swap kswapd0 process sucking the entire CPU.

Fired up XTerm and tried to renice kswapd0, default was zero

- Bring to 1: no improvement
- Bring to -1: audio chopping became more frequent, but shorter in duration
- Bring to -2: audio chopping became shorter

Very optimistic daydream at this point, if Uberkernel would be able to do some optimizations there... I did some research and seems like some Android devices have this same issue and the only way to fix it is to install a new kernel.