Adobe flash makes VM unresponsive

[UlyssesOfEpirus]

In a linux VM, command "nice" allows the user to launch a process with a priority that is higher or lower than normal, so it uses more or less percent of cpu power. The user can also lower or raise the priority of a running process with tools like "htop".

But is it possible for the user to lower the priority of a specific thread within a running process?

The reason I'm asking, the adobe flash plugin for firefox makes the entire user interface of a linux VM unresponsive when the cpu runs at 100%. Seen the same happen when the priority of a cpu-intensive process is raised too much. So it is logical that flash runs some threads in too

high priority, and we don't want that.

Any tricks to slow down a firefox plugin (.so executable) like flash?

[birdie]

Firefox 3.6.x creates a separate process for running flash plugin - you can alter its priority automatically by e.g. running this script (save it to a file, and make it executable using 'chmod +x filename.sh' command):

#! /bin/bash

while :; do
      renice 20 -p `ps ax | grep plugin-container | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'` &> /dev/null
      sleep 1
done

However this script won't address the core problem with your flash - the fact that it uses 100% of CPU time.

I'd suggest going to youtube, right clicking any video, choosing "Settings ..." and disabling/enabling "Hardware acceleration".

[UlyssesOfEpirus]

That's cool. Will require some testing.

There seem to be several processes associated with the flash plugin, seen this in htop, can also be seen if you type:

top -H -n 1 | grep plugin-cont

Can't find how the same can be done with "ps". Do you know?

[birdie]

Hm, probably you're right, we need to change all threads priority:

renice 20 -p `top -H -n 1 | grep plugin-cont | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'` &> /dev/null

[UlyssesOfEpirus]

Command "top" doesn't show them all, in htop if you press F5 it shows 4 of them when watching a youtube video. Whereas "top" shows 2 or 3.

So "ps" must be the right way to do it, as alluded in my previous post. But what parameters do you give to "ps" to make it show a tree view that includes all threads?