Big problem: org agenda freezes my process

Big problem: org agenda freezes my process

[Tory S. Anderson]

I've been trying to debug a nearly show-stopping issue for a few weeks now; the next step is a more thorough bisection of my setup, but I wanted to send this in case anyone else experiences this or already knows the solution.

Lately, when I try to view an orgmode agenda it seems that two things make it cause my emacs CPU threat to spin to max and freeze up, which is a huge problem since I'm an exwm user and live in my agenda view. As far as I've been able to tell, when an item from today is clocked into multiple times in the same day, it prompts most agenda actions to result in a freeze and some kind of loop that is binding up my system. It has some gaps, so if I spam C-g I will eventually, usually, escape given 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

I first ran into this problem thinking it was because I had an entry with a "+1d" note on it, so it would always show up; but inconsistent results led me to the more precise discovery that it's apparently when it is logged in to multiple times in the day AND when it is shown with =(org-agenda-show-log t)=, which I had on my default. At its worst, even moving the cursor in the agenda buffer would trigger the freezing, let alone actually clocking in/out of anything. However, when I am not showing the log, it seems like it's ok. I've tried =toggle-debug-on-quit" but I don't recognize anything in the stack trace that actually tells me what it is doing when it spins to a halt.

I'm currently on org mode version 9.3.7. I've tried with different versions but without a change in behavior. This, combined with the fact that the issues seem to have begun in the past month, indicates that it probably isn't orgmode itself causing this issue, but I haven't located what it IS yet. If anyone has ideas on how to debug this without a bisection, or an has dealt with this before, I'm more than eager to hear it; in the meanwhile, I'll perform a more thorough bisection of my init file as time permits.

- Tory

Re: Big problem: org agenda freezes my process

[Tim Cross]

torys.anderson@gmail.com (Tory S. Anderson) writes:

> I've been trying to debug a nearly show-stopping issue for a few weeks now; the
> next step is a more thorough bisection of my setup, but I wanted to send this in
> case anyone else experiences this or already knows the solution.
>
> Lately, when I try to view an orgmode agenda it seems that two things make it
> cause my emacs CPU threat to spin to max and freeze up, which is a huge problem
> since I'm an exwm user and live in my agenda view. As far as I've been able to
> tell, when an item from today is clocked into multiple times in the same day, it
> prompts most agenda actions to result in a freeze and some kind of loop that is
> binding up my system. It has some gaps, so if I spam C-g I will eventually,
> usually, escape given 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
>
> I first ran into this problem thinking it was because I had an entry with a
> "+1d" note on it, so it would always show up; but inconsistent results led me to
> the more precise discovery that it's apparently when it is logged in to multiple
> times in the day AND when it is shown with =(org-agenda-show-log t)=, which I
> had on my default. At its worst, even moving the cursor in the agenda buffer
> would trigger the freezing, let alone actually clocking in/out of anything.
> However, when I am not showing the log, it seems like it's ok. I've tried
> =toggle-debug-on-quit" but I don't recognize anything in the stack trace that
> actually tells me what it is doing when it spins to a halt.
>
> I'm currently on org mode version 9.3.7. I've tried with different versions but
> without a change in behavior. This, combined with the fact that the issues seem
> to have begun in the past month, indicates that it probably isn't orgmode itself
> causing this issue, but I haven't located what it IS yet. If anyone has ideas on
> how to debug this without a bisection, or an has dealt with this before, I'm
> more than eager to hear it; in the meanwhile, I'll perform a more thorough
> bisection of my init file as time permits.
>

Does the problem also occur if your not running exwm? I stopped using
exwm for a very similar reason i.e. every now and then, I would try to
do something and the CPU load would peak, everything would become
unresponsive and either I had to wait (for minutes) or start killing
things to try and get back control. Probably first thing to do is see if
you can reproduce the issue without exwm. If you can, the next thing to
do would be to come up with a minimal org config and recipe to reproduce
as this will allow others here to try and help debug the issue. 

BTW I gave up on exwm as I found a few issues and found it often got
slow. I switched to Stumpwm (Common Lisp WM), which I found great as I
was then able to have a window manager which worked like Emacs, could
have same keyboard interface and could be modified 'on the fly' with
lisp. I only stopped using it when I started experimenting with Wayland.


-- 
Tim Cross

Re: Big problem: org agenda freezes my process

[Ihor Radchenko]

torys.anderson@gmail.com (Tory S. Anderson) writes:

> Lately, when I try to view an orgmode agenda it seems that two things make it cause my emacs CPU threat to spin to max and freeze up, which is a huge problem since I'm an exwm user and live in my agenda view. As far as I've been able to tell, when an item from today is clocked into multiple times in the same day, it prompts most agenda actions to result in a freeze and some kind of loop that is binding up my system. It has some gaps, so if I spam C-g I will eventually, usually, escape given 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

Few generic things that may produce behaviour when Emacs is not reacting
to C-g:

Do you use any kind of fontification packages/customisation dealing with
org agenda? Does disabling font-lock-mode in agenda help? Do you have
any mode line customisation that may be affected? 

Best,
Ihor