npviewer.bin eating processing power

[sitor]

Hi,

Somtimes my laptop starts running real hot. When I look in ksysguard, the culprit is npviewer.bin that uses a full core of the two in the laptop. When I kill npviewer.bin the CPU load drops again to normal levels.

What is npviewer.bin for and how can I avoid it to eat my CPU's? Can I avoid that it being loaded at all?

KR,

Sitor

[wobo]

npviewer.bin is Firefox wrapper to run the 32-bit flashplayer plugin in a 64-bit system.

Quoting ahmad samir from a Mandriva bug report:

You can simply uninstall nspluginwrapper

(See http://lists.mandriva.com/bugs/2010-03/msg03242.php )

Also see an older post in the ubuntu forums (it's not a Mandriva/Mageia problem):
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=647961

[sitor]

Wobo,

How come then that npviewer is running on my i586 system? That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense?

KR,

Sitor

[doktor5000]

nspluginwrapper saves your browser from plugin crashes, without it the whole browser would crash.
With nsluginwrapper you only should need to reload the page. That's what it was intended for.

[ahmad]

On an i586 system, you don't really need nspluginwrapper with most modern web browsers (firefox and chromium-browser for example) as they, natively, already run the plugins (e.g. adobe flash) using an out-of-process plugins technology, i.e if the plugin crashes the web browser itself won't crash with it.

[sitor]

Then it should better not be installed by default on an i586 system, correct? I mean it would save some space, install time but it would certainly save electricity seen the CPU power it eats!
If so, I will create a bug report to ask it to be removed from i586 installs in the future.

[doktor5000]

Unfortunately this is not true with every browser in the repos, think about konqueror, rekonq, midori and the other webkit-based browsers.
Not all of them have this plugin-container system. so nspluginwrapper could be saving you some crashes due to plugins.

[ahmad]

Then it should better not be installed by default on an i586 system, correct? I mean it would save some space, install time but it would certainly save electricity seen the CPU power it eats!
If so, I will create a bug report to ask it to be removed from i586 installs in the future.

It's not slated to be installed by default on an i586 installation, however firefox still suggests nspluginwrapper, so if it's on the CD ISO's nspluginwrapper will get installed.

I've checked and nspluginwrapper exists on the i586 Live CD ISO's, but not on the DVD ISO's. Please file a bug report, nspluginwrapper shouldn't be on the Live ISO's if it's not supposed to be installed by default.

I've changed firefox to only suggest nspluginwrapper for x86_64; the i586 package doesn't need it nowadays.

[ahmad]

Unfortunately this is not true with every browser in the repos, think about konqueror, rekonq, midori and the other webkit-based browsers.
Not all of them have this plugin-container system. so nspluginwrapper could be saving you some crashes due to plugins.

At the expense of overheating users' CPU's... that's not optimal, IMHO.

[doktor5000]

Like my one of my teachers said: One can't have everything.
There's always another side of the same medal. Browser crashes or 100% cpu sometimes. What is better?

[wobo]

There's 2 more sides of the medal which may be a better solution than the 2 you mentioned:
- not using such software which crashes the browser
- use a browser which does not crash when a plugin crashes.

[doktor5000]

Notice to self: Evaluate lightspark and gnash again.