MS hangs for about a minute after about any action

• Dec 8, 2021 - 21:30

For a week or so starting up my MS and loading took a few minutes, and saving small 1 a 2 pages) score took about 2..4 minutes. I've aborted MS several times thinking it got stuck. Normally I have 5..8 songs open in MS with "start with last session" enabled.
Yesterday I found the cause in the system monitor: when MS blocks it is using 12.5% cpu, which is 1 core of my intel i8 processor; after 1. 2 minutes cpu usage normalizes and MS is responsive again.
Today I closed all open songs, disabled loading the previous session, created a fresh (jazz) song and copied the staves of one of my previous songs. But everything remains the same.
Today MS blocks for a minute on almost on everything touch in the score, sometimes even after the first click on a note to set the loop endpoint. Also when trying to shift the page.

My linux system Ubuntu Studio 21.10 using Jack audio via USB device, has 1.5 .. 3 of 6 MB Ram left, no swapping, disk for system and songs is a SSD. Audio output is a 10-channel mixer with audio USB (input). Switching off another audio/midi USB device (my keyboard) has no impact.
This is the latest appimage version, a new copy of the appimage behaves the same. Now using this appimage for about a month, the first 3 weeks gave no problems.

Is this a known problem in MS? I would welcome any suggestions to tackle this cripling problem.

OS: Ubuntu 21.10, Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 3.6.2.548021370, revision: 3224f34, appimage version


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Indeed, no plugin has been installed, and none of the default plugin's are enabled.
I only changed some settings for this default "installation" of the AppImage package: jack as output, enable OSC control, set square brackets as shortcuts for loop-start and loop-end, and play with some startup options to now prevent any score to load automaticly.

Update: the older 3.2 version of MS thas was installed by default (as a normal linux program) on my Ubuntu Studio 21.04 system, works normal. I can load, play, modify and save both older (not touched in v3.6) and recent scores (recently modified in v3.6.2).
On recent scores I need to press "ignore" on the warning dialog "this score was saved in a newer version of MS". Loading of my single-page score completes in less then a second.

In reply to by fransklip

Update 2: I tried a couple of older versions of the appimage that I have used only on my previous Ubuntu system: Ubuntu Studio 18.10:
- V3.4.2 (revision: 148e43f) is the latest version from my backup that runs normally on my current system.
- V3.5.0 (the next version in my backup) behaves like v3.6.2

In reply to by jeetee

Thanks for the hint.
I did some checking of jack on my system. Appears that the normal way to start and control jack is using "Studio Controls" utility package (gui and a system part), Studio Controls fails to start jackd and fails to see jackd info. Coming from an older system (v18), I didn't know this new utility and ignored it until now (yes, I didn't read the release notes of all the versions inbetween). Controlling jack using cli jack_control and gui QJackCtl works. Tried the bootable installation disk (and an installation on a usb disk) of the same distro (Ubuntu Studio 21.10) on an other computer with dissimilar hardware and both Studio Control and MS on jack i/o worked as normal.
On my problematic system I created a new user account, and there I can use Studio Controls as expected to configure and start jack, and first test with MS 3.6.2 shows that it also runs and plays normal.

So, now it looks like some setting in my normal working account causes the problem. I will check this further.

In reply to by fransklip

final update: system re-install fixed the problems
2 days ago I did a fresh install of the Ubuntu Studio 21.10 operating system, and installed several of the applications / packages / libraries that i need. I configured the jack audio system using the Studio Controls app and set my Beringer USB mixer as output. Now Musescore 3.6.2 appimage runs as expected with jack configured as output.

I also tried to restore the Musescore configuration file of my previous (problematic) system, and then the problems re-appeared with the same and older (not touched with previous version) song files. Looks like something in the settings file while running both the older and the current version of MS (and saving changes in the file in old and new version) could also have triggered the problem?

So, I returned to the default settings file from the installation (I saved it) and made my normal adjustments again. Up to now MS is working as normal.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

As you suggested, I've compared a set of ini files, of previous (the problematic) and current system (first start and after some use). (see the attached files) But I couldn't see any appearent problem (I cannot judge the binay items).

However the lock-up re-appeared,
and gradually getting worse: beeing triggered more often by more types of events ! At first is seemed only when showing the Navigation bar and that was consistent across restarts of Ms and system. Closing it is normal. After some use of MS it was tiggered sometimes by more events, and it got more often.
Then did "Preferences: Reset to default", and restarted MS.
The problems seem to have DISappeared !!
Then applied some necessary settings: jack audio, startup with last session. Still normal!

see the first txt file for some more complete notes.

This kind of strange problems gradually building up in time, makes me think of some shortage of a limited resource like memory, e.g. a memory leak, some removed objects that are not freed. But it builds up across program restarts and OS reboots, so it's not just working memory.
And doing Reset Preferences clears the situation.

Could this be related to the appimage environment? That is a virtual drive of limited size.
Unfortunately I cannot try a native build of MS, as the version in the Ubuntu repository is too old to have this problem.

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