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snerdini · Oct 27, 2003, 12:34 AM

I've got Panther on two machines now, and Mail is consistently taking up over 50% of the CPU - even when idle! Anyone else having this problem?

wclarkson · Oct 27, 2003, 12:38 AM

Mine is idle at 0.0% using top. What type of connection do you have IMAP or POP?

snerdini · Oct 27, 2003, 12:41 AM

Both. I've got a .Mac account and my work account (the POP acct). What's worse, it seems that Mail is basically using all of the unused CPU cycles - my G4 is at 100% constantly while Mail is open!

Hop Pocket · Oct 27, 2003, 12:46 AM

I had this happen to me today. Out of the blue, Mail pegged the cpu. It could be that it is indexing your emails. Who knows. I have seen similar behavior with the Finder. Sporadic heavy CPU usage.

It is pretty annoying, I'll admit.

snerdini · Oct 27, 2003, 12:48 AM

All other processes seem to be behaving themselves. Here is a screenie:

ryaxnb · Oct 27, 2003, 12:48 AM

Welcome to the land of does that matter? If your work isn't slowed down, frankly I don't care a bit whether programs are CPU hogs or not. For instance, Classic in early DPs of OS X was a real CPU pig. But as soon as you actually wanted to do something, it immediately went down.

nobitacu · Oct 27, 2003, 12:50 AM

Mail doesn't do this to me at all in Panther. It stays at 0% when idel.

Ming

CheesePuff · Oct 27, 2003, 01:03 AM

I just had this happen... Mail has been open for about 16 hours and then I went to my Inbox and everything was SLOW in Mail, but outside of Mail the system was fine. But it was using about 45% CPU. I had to quit and then re-open and now its fine.

snerdini · Oct 27, 2003, 01:13 AM

Well, it seems to have settled down. The strange thing is that it had been doing that on two separate machines at the same time - who knows. Looks like I jumped the gun on this one. I give myself a big

and maybe one of these:

dli537 · Oct 27, 2003, 01:13 AM

I experienced the same thing on my dual 2GHZ G5. Mail was fine until tonight. Here is a simple fix to the high CPU usage problem. Go to your library/preferences folder and delete
com.apple.mail.plist. Open mail and re-enter your account information and every thing is fine again. Don't worry, you still keep all your messages and rules etc.

nobitacu · Oct 27, 2003, 01:30 AM

This thread is cursed!!!!! Right after I read this, it happened to me, like right after too! Blah!

Why do you have to curse me!??? This thing better solve on its own.

Ming

snerdini · Oct 27, 2003, 01:58 AM

Originally posted by nobitacu:
This thread is cursed!!!!! Right after I read this, it happened to me, like right after too! Blah! Why do you have to curse me!??? This thing better solve on its own.

Ming

Just complain about it loudly on some message forum somewhere, and it will go away on its own

nobitacu · Oct 27, 2003, 03:09 AM

Yup, worked for me, it's gone now.

Oh well, that was fun.

Ming

vision619 · 03:19 AM

I'm having the same problem. Mail is using 100%?

I have a Dual 1GZ and have had problem with proccesors overheating. I've had to replace them twice! I hope this doesn't cause a heat problem again....

Also I deleted the com.apple.mail.plist file and still the same thing.

Is there any way to monitor temperature (and I hate to say this ... like you can on a PC?)

Love Calm Quiet · Oct 27, 2003, 07:35 AM

Just like with autos... don't you just love those *intermittent* problems.

There must be some background process (like indexing, as was suggested) going on occasionally. Any "fix" is likely to be illusory till we understand WHY mail is working so hard at those moments.

What about the "Delete .plist" solution - I wonder if that wasn't just a temporary (apparent) fix that seemed to eliminate the problem because it comes & goes.

I'm not on Panther yet, but can anyone say if there's a preference in MAIL to set when mail does indexing?

Sophus · Oct 27, 2003, 09:47 AM

A bit off topic:

Mail in Panther seems to put my mailboxes/accounts offline from time to time. The result is that it stops fetching mail from the corresponding accounts. In the drawer, the accounts/boxes is grayed out and there is a lightening symbol (Z) next to them. If I click the lightening symbol, the accounts go online again. I just found out that I had not revieved mail in a couple of ddays and started investigating. What is the cause of this? How do I fix it permanently? BTW, it never happend in Jaguar.

nobitacu · Oct 27, 2003, 12:40 PM

Originally posted by vision619:
Is there any way to monitor temperature (and I hate to say this ... like you can on a PC?)

Yes there is a way to monitor your temp. Get Temperature Monitor from versiontracker.com
Link here: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19994

I'm not sure how it would work with dual cpu though, but might as well try it out and see how it goes on your computer. Most of us use this app to monitor temp on our computer.

Ming

NeXTLoop · Oct 27, 2003, 01:10 PM

Because it seems to get worse the longer you've got Mail open, it sounds like some kind of memory leak. If so, we'll probably have to wait on Apple to release an update.

mrtew · Oct 27, 2003, 07:14 PM

My Mail and my roommates were both doing that last night.... 100% CPU every time Mail was started up. But not they're OK. Too freaky.

vision619 · Oct 27, 2003, 07:17 PM

Mine's ok now too? What the hell was that? It just went awway for no reason?

torifile · Oct 27, 2003, 09:53 PM

Mine did it too. And it does matter. When I'm not plugged in, having apps that don't use all my CPU is important. Battery life suffers if the CPU is pegged all the time.

geekwagon · Oct 27, 2003, 10:02 PM

Next time it does it, try opening the Activity Viewer in Mail (Window menu-> Activity Viewer)

I bet it is doing some indexing task or compacting databases.

snerdini · Oct 27, 2003, 10:50 PM

Originally posted by geekwagon:
Next time it does it, try opening the Activity Viewer in Mail (Window menu-> Activity Viewer)

I bet it is doing some indexing task or compacting databases.

Actually, I did just that, and according to Mail, it was doing nothing...

torifile · Oct 27, 2003, 11:38 PM

Originally posted by geekwagon:
Next time it does it, try opening the Activity Viewer in Mail (Window menu-> Activity Viewer)

I bet it is doing some indexing task or compacting databases.

Nope. Nothing. I've tried it all. The only thing that cured it was sending an email out.

Don't ask why, but as soon as it got done sending that email, it was fixed.

t_hah · Oct 28, 2003, 01:37 AM

I can make Mail use 100% CPU time the following way. I have a Yahoo account, and an IMAP account at the University and a Microsoft Exchange email account. Just by selecting the "Sent" icon, Mail will try to look up all the sent mail, including the one at my IMAP email, and Exchange server. This will make Mail hog the CPU as it is working hard with all the servers at the same time.

I am not sure if this is the correct behavior, but maybe this is what is happening with some of you.

t

mrtew · Oct 28, 2003, 07:44 AM

Originally posted by t_hah:
I can make Mail use 100% CPU time the following way. ... Just by selecting the "Sent" icon,...I am not sure if this is the correct behavior, but maybe this is what is happening with some of you.

Nope, I had the CPU problem 2 days ago, and clicking on the Sent folder doesn't affect it now. And I don't remember doing it then.

Love Calm Quiet · Oct 28, 2003, 09:11 AM

I had completely forgotten that I had this kind of weird memory effect one time a couple weeks ago (Jaguar Mail). I forget what I had just been doing - maybe just after adding a second .mac acct to my accounts in preferences. All of a sudden the HD was very busy and I could see the memory usage in Memory Monitor climbing steeply (maybe 1MB/second?) I think I finally had to quit or force quit mail twice; maybe finally removing the troublesome second account or something. Eventually I was able to reinstall the second account and it has behaved since. (excepting Oct 28 notes about mail LOSS). Behaved memory-wise that is.

arekkusu · Oct 28, 2003, 09:20 AM

Originally posted by ryaxnb:
Welcome to the land of does that matter? If your work isn't slowed down, frankly I don't care a bit whether programs are CPU hogs or not.

Buy a laptop, then you will care.

torifile · Oct 28, 2003, 09:47 AM

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
I had completely forgotten that I had this kind of weird memory effect one time a couple weeks ago (Jaguar Mail). I forget what I had just been doing - maybe just after adding a second .mac acct to my accounts in preferences. All of a sudden the HD was very busy and I could see the memory usage in Memory Monitor climbing steeply (maybe 1MB/second?) I think I finally had to quit or force quit mail twice; maybe finally removing the troublesome second account or something. Eventually I was able to reinstall the second account and it has behaved since. (excepting Oct 28 notes about mail LOSS). Behaved memory-wise that is.

That's nice. But this thread is about Panther mail and CPU usage.

Powaqqatsi · Oct 28, 2003, 10:34 AM

Originally posted by arekkusu:
Buy a laptop, then you will care.

Exactly. And btw: you DO feel the difference in speed with a maxed out CPU and an idle one. Apps that need the power get it, I know that, but they get less power compared to having an idle CPU. (hope that last sentence made in any sense)

jasong · Oct 28, 2003, 11:35 PM

Same thing happened to me, I tried all sorts of things to clear it up, it eventually went away on its own.

Very strange.

-- Jason

snerdini · Oct 29, 2003, 12:26 AM

Well it certainly makes me feel better that I'm not the only one experiencing this problem.

*Update*
I'm only using Panther at night right now - don't trust it enough to upgrade my work machine, since I have a deadline Friday.

However, Mail has been behaving ever since that first incident settled down. I'm going to keep montoring it though, just to see what happens.