plugin_host taking 100% CPU on OSX 10.11.1

[rycfung]

I’m seeing the plugin_host process from ST3 takes up 100% of my CPU, even with a fresh installation of ST3. There are no plugins and no added user preferences (I removed ~/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3 before running).

I tried to run dtruss on my plugin_host process to take a look at what it’s running. I pasted a snippet of what I got from my output.

Not sure if this helps debugging, looks like it’s just waiting for messages? Not sure if this is expected.

sem_post(0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, 0x10000000203, 0x100)		 = -1 Err#9

              libsystem_kernel.dylib`sem_post+0xa
              plugin_host`shm_channel::read_message(string_buffer*, int)+0x30
              plugin_host`main+0x19b
              plugin_host`start+0x34
              plugin_host`0x2

sem_wait(0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, 0x10000000203, 0x100)		 = -1 Err#9

              libsystem_kernel.dylib`sem_wait+0xa
              plugin_host`shm_channel::read_message(string_buffer*, int)+0x30
              plugin_host`main+0x19b
              plugin_host`start+0x34
              plugin_host`0x2

sem_post(0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, 0x10000000203, 0x100)		 = -1 Err#9

              libsystem_kernel.dylib`sem_post+0xa
              plugin_host`shm_channel::read_message(string_buffer*, int)+0x30
              plugin_host`main+0x19b
              plugin_host`start+0x34
              plugin_host`0x2

sem_wait(0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, 0x10000000203, 0x100)		 = -1 Err#9

              libsystem_kernel.dylib`sem_wait+0xa
              plugin_host`shm_channel::read_message(string_buffer*, int)+0x30
              plugin_host`main+0x19b
              plugin_host`start+0x34
              plugin_host`0x2

sem_post(0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, 0x10000000203, 0x100)		 = -1 Err#9

              libsystem_kernel.dylib`sem_post+0xa
              plugin_host`shm_channel::read_message(string_buffer*, int)+0x30
              plugin_host`main+0x19b
              plugin_host`start+0x34
              plugin_host`0x2

sem_wait(0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, 0x10000000203, 0x0)		 = -1 Err#9

              libsystem_kernel.dylib`sem_wait+0xa
              plugin_host`shm_channel::read_message(string_buffer*, int)+0x30
              plugin_host`main+0x19b
              plugin_host`start+0x34
              plugin_host`0x2

....

[rycfung]

Is anyone seeing this issue with ST3? Maybe the sublime team can point me to any workarounds?

[snail2go]

Any resolutions? It’s completely unusable for me and has been for months…

[niklas]

The issues I have seen here previously has been related to plugins. Try disabling them one by one and see if it gets better. Although the original poster says he did not have any installed, but maybe you do.

[wbond]

I don’t know of anything the plugin_host would be doing with a fresh install that would take 100% of the CPU.

If you open a large project, Sublime Text will fire up some additional processes to index the symbols, but that would be the Sublime Text process with the --crawl argument, and not plugin_host.

[rycfung]

As far as I know. Has nothing to do with existing plugins. Fresh install has the same problem. I got a new laptop, problem solved.

[snail2go]

So wait, you solved the problem with a fresh install? Or did not, and then got a new laptop which somehow solved the problem - thus making it clear that the problem is some hidden underlying thing that isn’t caught by fresh installs or removing all plugins.

Because that sounds bang on with what I’m having. Have reverted to sublime text 2 for now. No problems there.

[snail2go]

So I bought a new laptop and there were no problems with the same plugin.

I updated sublime text 3 to the latest build (3114), and although after the first few launches there was still some crazy CPU usage, for some unknown reason it’s now quiet…?

Weirdness…

[FichteFoll]

Sublime Text indexes your project when it first launches, which can easily spike the CPU to 100% and is intended. After indexing is done, the worker processes will finish and CPU usage goes back to normal.

[snail2go]

As logical as that sounds it was not the case. The CPU remained at 100% throughout the duration that Sublime was open.

[waldo1979]

I’m having the same problem. Fresh install, no plugins, no indexing. opensnoop shows no file I/O for the sublime text 3 and plugin_host process.

[kingkeith]

How to find the source of plugin_host maxing out CPU?

Sublime Text and the plugin_host use shared memory to communicate, and part of that is using semaphores to gracefully wait for new events without sitting in a busy loop. If the semaphore creation fails (i.e., sem_open returning SEM_FAILED), then 100% CPU usage by both processes would be a symptom. There is a system limit to the number of semaphores in OSX, and they're not cleaned up automatically when a process exits. Perhaps you have a program that has leaked semaphores and consumed all avail…

[pixelass]

I have the same problem. I removed most plugins since Sublime Text just seems to be too buggy in its core. I don’t understand how a program can be as unstable as Sublime Text.

I always end up disabling a lot of features or setting tons of flags to make Sublime Text work with regular work environments. Sublime is definitely no ‘professional’ solution to writing code. Due to the issues it is almost easier to write code in plain text-editors.

I think I spend an average of 10 minutes/day trying to fix some Sublime Text issue or trying to figure out what is causing the issue.

[pixelass]

Is there any way to fix this?

Even better: are there any intensions to fix these severe performance issues?

After all these issues make the product unusable therefore I don’t understand why this product costs money.

[pixelass]

This is how ‘low level’ my sublime is but it still has severe performance issues (using 2 index_workers)

The issues occur randomly. A lot of times I try to write something but the output is laggy and the order of typed keys get’s messed up. I first experienced this issue about a year ago, mentioned it several times but nobody actually seems to care.

Running this ion a 2016 MBP 15’’ Retina 16GB RAM.

[oivva]

0. Quit Sublime Text via menu item: Sublime Text → Quit Sublime Text
1. Remove ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 3/Installed\ Packages/0_package_control_loader.sublime-package-new file.
2. Remove these folders:
   • ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 3/Cache
   • ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 3/Index

[seattlevine]

I’ve been seeing this on build 3126. I do not have the file:
~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 3/Installed\ Packages/0_package_control_loader.sublime-package-new

Anyone else seeing this?