[8.04] Drawing evolution window on screen very slow

I'm experiencing the same thing, even in small mailboxes. Trying to navigate through the listed folders and emails, as well as resizing columns are extremely slow and choppy. But when logging directly on the server and running the application on the server, the problem doesn't exist, so the problem definitely involves using the thin client. I don't experience any other type of choppy or slow down performance with other applications including OpenOffice and Firefox. How do I go about debugging this issue?

In the previous Ubuntu (Gusty), Evolution menus were extremely slow and navigating through the emails was quick. It seems that Hardy has reversed this. This certainly needs to be addressed since it is Ubuntu's default email program and thin clients are used in schools and business and not by home users and since it is an LTS release.

As a follow up on the 7.10 Gusty Evolution performance I stated in my previous post: The problem was with the package pulseaudio-esound-compat package. When that package was installed, Evolution would fill the syslog and user logs with the following message:

May 21 15:37:39 acal2 pulseaudio[21336]: module-protocol-stub.c: Failed to create socket directory '/tmp/.esd/socket': Operation not permitted
May 21 15:37:39 acal2 pulseaudio[21336]: module.c: Failed to load module "module-esound-protocol-unix" (argument: ""): initialization failed.
May 21 15:37:39 acal2 pulseaudio[21336]: main.c: Module load failed.
May 21 15:37:39 acal2 pulseaudio[21336]: main.c: failed to initialize daemon.

After removing that package, the error messages disappeared and Evolution functioned like normal. This does NOT seem to be the case with the LTSP and Evolution packages in 8.04. Evolution doesn't cause any error messages, the the slow and choppy performance is with all aspects of Evolution. Where do I begin even trying to debug this problem?

Same problem here. On the one hand the whole GUI loads very slowly (especially the columns in the listing when switching from one folder to another); Scrolling works only by the second. If one has some hundred mails it's horror to work like that.

I'd like to point out that the users are working on an MS Exchange Server which is connected via IMAP in Evolution. The reason may not be the network load. We've only upgraded to Hardy last weekend. Until then we used Dapper where this problem would not occur.

We are using POP3 so i don't think thats the problem. But it would be much appreciated if somebody could tell us where to start debugging the problem.

I've changed the Status to Confirmed because we have two different sources of confirmation in this report.

I've the same problem after the upgrade to 8.04.

Here's what I've observed from some crazy experiments. I've noticed that Evolution 2.22, regardless when using it on a normal Ubuntu install or on a LTSP thin client, it is more sluggish than the Evolution 2.12 found in Gusty, for the very same reasons stated above. It seems to take two seconds for Evolution to "Formating Message" where the previous version, the formating was instant. Scrolling from one email to the next is also very choppy, especially using the previous and next buttons in the tool bar. This is experienced on a variety of machines, all at different speeds and specs (and apparently many other users).

To try and pin-point what the problem is, I tried a few combinations of installs and found mixed results. All of these tests were with thin clients. First I had a basic Ubuntu 8.04 and LTSP installed and the 8.04 Evolution packages installed by default which had poor performance. I then installed Gusty's Evolution packages 2.12 instead of Evolution 2.22 on the very same server and the performance was excellent. I then tried Debian Lenny's Evolution packages 2.22 on this server and found the problem still exists. I then tried a complete install of Debian Lenny's LTSP server and Evolution 2.22 and found the performance to be excellent (overall much quicker than Ubuntu's I might add). In summary:

8.04 LTSP + 8.04 Evo 2.22 = slow performance
8.04 LTSP + 7.10 Evo 2.12 = excellent performance
8.04 LTSP + Debian Evo 2.22 = slow performance
Debian Lenny LTSP + Debian Evo 2.22 = excellent performance

Based on these results, there is something about the Evolution 2.22 Ubuntu package that makes it a great deal sluggish than 2.12 in Gusty (the problem does NOT exist in Debian). When installing the 2.12 packages, I found no problem whatsoever so the problem seems to be with Evolution 2.22 and that the LTSP thin client model magnifies the problem a great deal.

I hope this helps somewhat on where to look.

there is no real difference between the debian and ubuntu evolution versions so I don't think your comment is accurate, the display speed issue could be bug #219587, could you try the hardy-proposed cairo version and comment on whether it fixes your issue?

I was only explaining my experiences and, now with knowledge of the bug you mentioned above, maybe it explains why the Debian Evolution runs just like the Ubuntu version, because the libcairo2 package was consistent on my Ubuntu system and I only installed the Debian Evolution packages. Anyway, I only had a few minutes to test it, but it seems like that was the problem and it is so much more responsive, so thank you so much. I know there is some debate in the bug you mentioned about whether to keep the patch or not, but I say remove it since Evolution is a widely used program and it greatly increases the performance. I plan on testing it some more, and I encourage others to try upgrading from hardy-proposed and test it too so you can give your feed back before we mark this as fixed (just to be certain).

Thank you so much for your help with this bug. Now if we can speed up the message reading pane in Evolution, because it seems like every message, no matter what the message, I get a half a second or more of "Formatting message", even if it's only a couple of lines in length. Does anyone else experience this, or maybe I'm just seeing things? And every time I delete a group of emails at one time, it doesn't hide the very last deleted email but remains listed and crossed out, even if I press Send/Receive. It's not until I change folders or somehow refresh the email list does it goes away. Know of any bugs filed for these two issues or should I file them myself?

Let me go back on what I said about the message display pane being a little slow, and clarify that it doesn't seem slow to me anymore. It seems to be just fine so I guess I was seeing things. Sorry about that and I didn't want to add to any confusion. The part about the multi-email delete and still displaying the last email deleted is certainly a bug and can be reproduced every time.

describing only one issue in a bug make the work much easier, the display issue when moving you mention is bug #230998 and an hardy update to fix that will be uploaded soon now

Issue not fixed by evolution update mentioned above, and I would not like this to be missed.

Clarification: Evolution main panel in LTSP client, and email windows generated by double clicking on an email, are painfully slow to draw. There is a perceptible delay of 2-3 seconds before content is formatted, and when switching windows the previous content of the main panel area remains visible again for 2-3 seconds.

Such issues are not apparent at all when using evolution on the LTSP server itself, using the same user profile.

Same experience here. I've tried the updated libcairo and it didn't solve anything at all.

After taking two more patches in as many days I can confirm that the issue is still present. Drawing and manipulating the main pane, or email windows, takes too long over LTSP, and much longer than Dapper did on the same equipment.

Installed packages: Evolution 2.22.2-0ubuntu1.3; ltsp-server 5.0.40~bzr20080212-0ubuntu6.

My original problem was scrolling through the list of emails either using the arrow keys or using the next and previous buttons in the tool bar. The updated libcairo2 package did seem to resolve that issue, especially with the previous and next buttons. But after further review and testing, I'd have to agree that, overall, the drawing and manipulation of graphics in Evolution is delayed and clunky. I admit that the libcairo2 update from hardy-proposed did help, at least with my problem, but it isn't the full solution. Once again, the problem is more apparent when using LTSP, but I do not believe it is related solely to LTSP, especially when the Gusty Evolution 2.12 installed on the same system works perfectly.

Also, every email that I view displays "Formatting Message" which rarely showed up in previous versions. Even an email with a single line causes Evolution to display "Formatting Message".

Is anything happening here?
I tried libcairo2 from intrepid, and it doesn't fix the problem either.

Are there any tricks or temporary solutions to mitigate this problem? Thew drawing is slower than other application in my computer. Let me know if I can help.
hardy 8.04
evolution 2.22.3.1

I am relatively new. How do I install libcairo2 from intrepid in hardy?
Thanks!

As you could have read from my comment, libcairo2 from intrepid doesn't solve the problems with evolution (or anything else which appears to be bugging for that matter). I backported it to hardy from the intrepid sources, if that helps you anything..

Is the bug in Evolution? Is there a way to change the way Evolution
deals with the graphics? sorry I am kind of lost here,
Thanks.
On Thu, 2008-10-23 at 14:00 +0000, Johan Mulder wrote:
> As you could have read from my comment, libcairo2 from intrepid doesn't
> solve the problems with evolution (or anything else which appears to be
> bugging for that matter). I backported it to hardy from the intrepid
> sources, if that helps you anything..
>

This bug is very frustrating because we're still hanging onto our 7.10 installation that does not have this bug. It would be great to update to a LTS release, especially since we only have 6 more months of security support. Since Evolution is used by all of our clients, we can't make that jump until this is resolved. Does anyone at least have any ideas as to why only Evolution seems to be the only application affected? What has changed from libcairo2 package from 8.4 on? I kind of feel helpless since I'm not a programmer and can only give my experiences.

I had such bug, but it has disappeared few month ago

The problem is still there in ubuntu 8.10. Apparently nobody seems to care about it :/

While the problem still exists in Ubuntu 9.04, when previewing and reading emails, a new problem has arrised. When pressing the compose new email button, I literally wait 15 seconds for the composer window to open. This is now Evolution 2.26 and this is not just LTSP, but anytime when Evolution is forwarded over SSH. I tested it on a different PC using the command ssh -X user@hostname 'evolution' and it yields the same result.

What about Evolution changes when forwarded over SSH is a mystery to me. Nothing is printed when using the --debug option. Does anyone know of a different bug is is? Possibly a component that Evolution uses to draw the widgets having performance problems when forwarded over SSH?

the new comment could be due to tracker

I don't have tracker running. I've also tried the same version (2.26) on openSUSE from their community repository and it has the same exact problem, so it seems to be an upstream problem? Ever since 8.04, Evolution has been exhibiting a slow performance over ssh. Since LTSP 5 runs over SSH, this is why this problem occurs in a LTSP setup.

Anthony, you should try the lts.conf option "LDM_DIRECTX = True" to disable SSH tunneling temporarily for your LTSP network. Reboot your thin clients with that option and try again. If Evolution speeds up, you can be certain that it's an SSH tunneling issue with Evolution rather than simply a remote X issue.

Actually I am using it with the option LDM_DIRECTX = True. I guess it is a remote X issue. How else can I test this?

Someone needs to look at the code responsible for it and see what they can find. IMHO it's pretty obvious there's something funky going on when you're using remote X, whether in LTSP or not.

I can confirm this new problem since upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04.

And as Jordan said, it would be great if somebody would take a look at this code and squash this bug once and for all!

A patched version of libxcb for a similar Firefox problem fixes this problem for me.

You can find this version in from Stéphane Graber PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~stgraber/+archive/ppa

And a LTSP-mailinglist discussion about the problem here:
http://<email address hidden>/msg36608.html

Not an LTSP bug, but rather a libxcb bug, fixed in stgraber's ppa for Jaunty, and fixed for good in Karmic.
Closing as invalid.

Thanks for the report, it has been some time without any response or feedback in this bug report and we are wondering if this is still an issue for you with the latest release of Ubuntu the Natty Narwhal, May you please test with that version and comment back if you're still having or not the issue? Please have a look at http://www.ubuntu.com/download to know how to install that version.Thanks in advance.

hardy not longer supported
please change status to Won't fix