Adobe Forums: Adobe Reader CPU Usage

(Hugo_Valadas)Community Member

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Adobe Reader CPU Usage

Dec 21, 2006 9:16 AM

Hello All,

The problem i'm having is that "acroread" process after being open for some time (many hours or even days) starts to use all the CPU without anyone touch the application. This causes lots of trouble because i'm using all the time simulation software and "acroread" starts to share CPU with my mission critical applications and I cannot be always checking if acroread has crashed.

I've tried with more than one Linux distribution and have read in some web forums that other linux distributions have the same problem.

Currently i'm using CentOS 4.4 (Linux 2.6.9-34.0.2.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri Jul 7 19:52:49 CDT 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux)
Even in CentOS 4.3 , 4.2 , 3.4 they all had the same problem.

I'm using acroread 7.0.8 but older versions of 7.x did the same.

Please share some ideas about this issue.
Thanks

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(AshutoshJSharma),

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Dec 22, 2006 3:30 AM

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Hi Hugo,

This is a known issue and we will be working on this for the next release.

Thanks,
Ashutosh

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(Hugo_Valadas),

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Dec 22, 2006 5:27 AM

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Ok. Thank you. Keep up the good work

Best Regards,
HV

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(Matt_Fago),

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Apr 25, 2007 9:27 AM

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This still occurs in Reader 7.0.9. Did the above fix make it into this version?

The specific issue I seem to have is that opening a PDF from within Firefox and then closing the browser tab leaves acroread running in the background. This process will eventually consume 100% of the CPU.

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(Viraj_Chatterjee),

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May 7, 2007 4:10 AM

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The fix did not make it into Reader 7.0.9 It shall be available in the 8.x version.

-vc

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(Toby_Stanfill),

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May 25, 2007 1:22 PM

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The cpu utilization has been killing us, so we came up with a temporary band-aid to hold us over until version 8 comes out. Just run this command every minute or so via crontab, and if there are any acroread jobs using 80%+ cpu that have used a full minute of processing time, it will kill it.

kill `top -b -n1 | grep acroread | awk '{ print $1 " " $9 " " $11 }' | egrep "(1[0-9][0-9]|[8-9][0-9]) [0-9]*[1-9]:" | awk '{ print $1 }'` 2>/dev/null

It's definitely not pretty, but it does work. I'd be interested to see if anyone else has found any creative workarounds for this issue...

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(Anupam_Garg),

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May 28, 2007 5:35 AM

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Hi Toby,

The pre-release of 8.x version is now available, which has the fix. I would suggest you to try that out and confirm to us. Your input is valuable to us.

If you are interested to be part of the 8.x pre-release program, please post your email address. I would get you enrolled.

Thanks,
Anupam Garg

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(Rui65),

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Jun 14, 2007 1:50 AM

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Hi,

Is it still possible to try the 8.x pre-release for Linux ?
As I am seeing the CPU problem often every day, I would be happy to test this new version and provide feedback.

Thanks,

Rui

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(Viraj_Chatterjee),

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Jun 14, 2007 1:56 AM

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Please send your email-id to agarg at adobe dot com, and Anupam shall make sure you are a part of the pre-release program.

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(Hugo_Valadas),

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Jul 7, 2007 4:59 AM

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Hi Again,

Toby, we have been dealing with the problem by using the "Auto Nice Daemon" (available for free http://and.sourceforge.net/).
It lets you define for any program, in this case "acroread" process, 3 steps of re-nice but for it's CPU time consumption. What I do is if the process has consumed more than let's say 15 minutes of CPU time it will lower it's priority and then if it goes for more than 20 minutes it will kill the process because using the "-9" for re-nice it will kill the process.

The CPU time usage is based on the time that your are really using the application, so if you have it just open and is not doing nothing it does not consume, but if it goes berserk and start wasting CPU it will kill it.

This way you don't need to use any crontab operation and you can configure the daemon to autostart and define how regularly it will check for the usage of the process.

Hope to see the final solution from Adobe anyway.

Thanks,
Hugo

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(GauravJain),

Jul 7, 2007 8:37 AM

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Hi Hugo,

Could you please let us know in what state you left Adobe Reader opened in the background?
1 - Did you have one or more documents opened?
2 - Was the Adobe Reader window in minimized (iconified) state?

That will help us identify the causes of high CPU usage even when idle.

Thanks,
Gaurav

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(Hugo_Valadas),

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Jul 8, 2007 11:38 AM

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Hi,

Well, in summary, Adobe Reader should not be opened anymore. It seems that even when closing the document the acroread process stays in the system running idle and from one moment to the other it starts consuming CPU at 99%.
This happens if you open the document with Adobe Reader itself or with the Browser plugin if you open a pdf document from a link inside the browser.

About your specific questions:

1- It seems that it does not matter how many documents you have oppened, but I'll test it further and get you a exact answer.

2- The problem seem to happen if you have the window in any state, maximized, minimized or even if you already have closed the window the process stays there. I'll try to make a more precise test with several Window positions and states.

My test will probably take some time since i did not find any pattern for the problem, the acroread process just goes crazy eating the CPU.

Thanks,
Hugo

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(PeterVW),

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Sep 23, 2008 1:56 PM

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Hello,

Essentially every time we use acrobat reader version 8.1.2_SU1 we have the problem of 100% cpu usage as described in earlier messages. This is very undesirable, can you please fix it? Do you need any further information for debugging. Information about a host on which the problem is experienced is below.

% uname -a
Linux usplmwd500342 2.6.18-92.1.10.el5 #1 SMP Wed Jul 23 03:56:11 EDT 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

% cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client release 5.2 (Tikanga)

% acroread -v
8.1.2_SU1

Thanks,
Peter

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(Rupert_Kolb),

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Oct 2, 2008 4:56 AM

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Same problem with 100% CPU usage when using the acroread as browser plugin.

The first opening of an PDF is ok. After few minutes (even if the PDF has been closed, that means, an other web page is opened) the acroread process flips to 100% cpu usage and every further click on PDFs is significant slower.

openSUSE 10.2 (X86-64)
Linux virto 2.6.18.8-0.10-xen #1 SMP Wed Jun 4 15:46:34 UTC 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
acroread-8.1.2_SU1-0.1
seamonkey-1.1.12-1.1

The home directories are mounted via nfs and automounter.

We have about 50 users, which are regulary complaining about the bad performance of opening and printing PDFs some few minutes after opening the first PDF with acroread plugin in the browser.

Rupert

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(Hunic_Gomes),

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Nov 5, 2008 4:39 PM

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I have the same problem with acroread-8.1.2_SU1-0.1, openSUSE 10.3 (Opteron 175). Firefox 3.03.

The problem can be recreated very easily. I just need to open any pdf file on the web. I can then run the top command and within a few minutes the acroread process will be up to around 50% CPU. If I leave the process then it will soon become 100%. The acroread process keeps on going even after I closed firefox.

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scopsm,

Community Member

Feb 20, 2009 2:38 AM

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I have this with 100% CPU usage with Adobe Reader 9 when just opening the Reader. Adobe weren't much help.

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Atanu Dhar,

Community Member

Feb 24, 2009 11:38 PM

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Dear Mr. McGeoghan,

Could you please give us the steps of reproducing this condition, were you running Reader standalone or trying to open a PDF inside a browser (which browser also would be a great input)

Thanks
Atanu

adharATadobeDOTcom

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kallu_be,

Community Member

Jul 19, 2009 1:40 AM

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Attached file is using 100% cpu on 64 bit Jaunty.

Steps to reproduce.
1) Open attached pdf in adobe reader.
2) There wont be cpu usage initially.
3) Wait for 5 min to see the surge in cpu usage.

system info:
Linux hercules-linux 2.6.28-14-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 8 07:41:18 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Acrobat reader info:

acroread:
Installed: 9.1.2-3jaunty1
Candidate: 9.1.2-3jaunty1
Version table:
*** 9.1.2-3jaunty1 0
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Attachments:

JRE03.pdf (180.1 K)

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CAM_WERDNA,

Community Member

Aug 3, 2009 7:32 AM

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Not sure whether this is the same problem or a different one.
For us acroread consumes all the memory and the CPU is maxed out swapping
until the oom manager kills acroread and the machine recov

Our machines are 2GB RAM with 2GB swap, running the x86_64 version of
Scientific Linux 5.3 (a recompilation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3)
- we don't really need a 64bit OS but some local apps run faster in 64 bit.

We first saw this with, I think, acroread 8.1.4 and continues through to 8.1.6.
(I am reluctant to switch to v9 since we are using it as a pdf viewer
not a flash viewer - adding javascript was bad enough - we would be
more likely to move to evince or another open source pdf viewer).

Typically acroread chews memory for users who run firefox 32bit
and the nppdf.so Adobe plugin, but I cannot confirm that it never
happens for users whose firefox opens a separate acroread process.

What extra imformation would help to debug this ?

Thanks,

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sanika Kulshreshtha,

Adobe Employee

Aug 6, 2009 11:36 PM

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Hi,

The high CPU usage problem when acroread is used inside browser on 64-bit systems has been fixed in AR 9.x. You could download the latest Adobe Reader 9.1.3 Security Update directly using the FTP link, or use YUM to install the update. Please use it and let us know if you still see 100% CPU usage.

Thanks!
Sincerely,
Sanika

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pkeller63,

Community Member

Aug 13, 2009 5:25 AM

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Dear Sanika,

The nppdf.so shared library that is provided in the download for linux is an ELF32 object, so is completely unusable with 64-bit browsers.

If you can make a 64-bit build available, I would be happy to try it out and report back on how well it performs.

Regards,
Peter.

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pkeller63,

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Aug 13, 2009 6:09 AM

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Sorry - forget I wrote that. I've just figured out now to use nspluginwrapper.

I'll see how the plugin behaves. Initial indications are good: it loads very fast.

Regards,.
Peter.

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sanika Kulshreshtha,

Adobe Employee

Aug 13, 2009 6:31 AM

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Glad to hear that Peter. Let us know how it goes.

Regards,
Sanika

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Agent_Nappi_007,

Community Member

Feb 15, 2011 5:55 AM

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Looks like that some people that might be able to help are subcribed to this thread.
It would be nice if you can take a look to the problem that I´ve reported in this post:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/791216?tstart=0

I´m glad to provide additional information there if required to not spam this thread with my problem.
Your help is very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Agent

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tdbartley,

Community Member

Feb 20, 2011 7:41 PM

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Problem persists in Adobe Reader 9.4 in CentOS 4.8. Running the stand-alone executable without even loading a PDF, the process immediately consumes nearly 100% of core.

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Adobe Reader CPU Usage

Dec 21, 2006 9:16 AM

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