While I was writing a shell script (doing this the past several days) just a few minutes ago my PC fans spinned up without any seemingly reason. I thought it might be the baloo process, but looking at the running processes I see it’s names block-rate-estim . It takes 6.2% CPU time and is running since minutes, on my modern 8 core CPU. And uses up 252 KiB. The command is shown as block-rate-estim --help, which when I run on the commandline myself will just run the program without output and blocking until I end the process. Sounds alarming to me first. Is something mining going on?

I looked up where the command is coming from:

$ ls -l /usr/bin/block-rate-estim
.rwxr-xr-x 14k root 20 Dez  2023 /usr/bin/block-rate-estim

$ yay -F block-rate-estim
extra/libde265 1.0.12-1 [installed: 1.0.15-1]
usr/bin/block-rate-estim

$ yay -Si libde265
Repository      : extra
Name            : libde265
Version         : 1.0.15-1
Description     : Open h.265 video codec implementation
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://github.com/strukturag/libde265
Licenses        : LGPL3
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : gcc-libs  glibc
Optional Deps   : ffmpeg: for sherlock265
qt5-base: for sherlock265
sdl: dec265 YUV overlay output
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Download Size   : 270,31 KiB
Installed Size  : 783,53 KiB
Packager        : Antonio Rojas 
Build Date      : Mi 20 Dez 2023 20:06:16 CET
Validated By    : MD5 Sum  SHA-256 Sum  Signature

It’s still going on the background, I have no idea what this is. The thing is, I didn’t start any process that is related to video codec. Other than FreeTube being in the background with video in Pause mode since 2 hours or so. I use FreeTube since months and this never happened before, I see this block-rate-estim process the first time.

What should I do? I’m on an up-to-date EndeavourOS installation.

  • gnuhaut
    5·
    8 months ago

    Maybe you have some sort of auto-completion plugin that attempts to parse --help output? And that particular binary doesn’t understand --help probably.

    Maybe try running pstree to see who spawns that process?

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.orgOP
      2·
      8 months ago

      It could be something like that, as I use Neovim and have bunch of plugins and stuff installed (LazyVim). And I frequently update those plugins within Neovim. So it’s possible that a system software and one of those plugins (or LazyVim itself) does not match anymore. Good hint!

      Unfortunately I restarted my system already, as it did not stop even after 10 minutes of waiting. It didn’t even stop my fans spinning, when logging out from my KDE session (however it could be that the fans just spin a little bit after closing app, to get normal temps?). So checking who spawns that process is no longer possible. I’m currently editing a file again and if this happens again, then I will check with pstree.

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        I think you may be able to log all started processes with strace or some similar tool, if you are interested

        • thingsiplay@beehaw.orgOP
          2·
          8 months ago

          Oh yes! I know the name of this program but never looked into it. Well guess this would be an excellent use case. I saved a bookmark to remember using it when this issue occurs again. Thanks.