100% CPU on thunderbird process (multiple)
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I've been having a problem with Thunderbird for a while, and recently tracked it down to Enigmail. Specifically I would find that I would get 1, 2, or 3 100% CPU processes in Thunderbird, that were running in the background, and that wouldn't ever die.
I recently found, that they were related to Enigmail. Here's what will happen:
1) I go to send an email
2) The email get to 'preparing email phase', and then hang in the sending process
3) My fans spin up, and in Activity Monitor I see a new 'thunderbird' process appear and hang at 100%.
4) I can wait forever, and the send will stay hung, and the process will stay at 100%.
5) If I go into Activity Monitor and kill that process. Thunderbird will immediately respond again saying: "Enigmail: Encryption failed".
6) I can then go and attempt to hit send on that email again. and 99% of the time, it immediately goes through.
7) 1% of the time, it hangs again and I repeat.
What is "latest version" of Enigmail? 1.4.6 or 1.5? (v1.5 is available from the Enigmail homepage but not yet approved on addons.mozilla.org).
In any case: this is most likely due to a known bug in Thunderbird 17 which should be fixed with the next Thunderbird release.
Enigmail v1.5 ... I just updated to Tbird 17.0.2 today. I'll see if it changes anything
Hi,
I'm on Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS w/ Seamonkey 2.15.2 and T-Bird 17.0.2. Both are using Enigmail 1.5 and I have massive memory leak and CPU usage in Seamonkey and runaway CPU usage in T-Bird. In T-Bird I also see a lot of attempts to decrypt/verify the same message even after it has been displayed, almost like an infinite loop. Eventually both apps become unusable requiring restarts on a regular basis.
Not sure if this helps.
Do you have any other add-ons installed apart from Enigmail? I don't think that there is a memory leak in Enigmail or caused by Enigmail, as this has never been reported (not in the last 10 years and not for this version). It's true that Enigmail acquires some memory during operation, but this is automatically garbage collected by Thunderbird / SeaMonkey.
The case you describe is probably more related to "Gloda", the Global Search and Indexing Database. If your CPU is so high, this is likely because your mails are being indexed or because Gloda is doing strange things. I'd suggest you try turning off the "Global Search and Indexing Database" in the Thunderbird preferences.