Dreamweaver CC 2017 process "node" high CPU usage

[maknase]

I have installed Dreamweaver CC 2017 on a Macbook Pro (i7, 16 GB RAM) and the process "node", which seems to be connected to Dreamwaver shows a 100 to 120% CPU usage all the time and my fan is running at high spped all the time. Has anyone a suggestion how this can be fixed? Thanks!

[hen3ry]

DW CC 2017.5 (9878 build) on MacOS 10.12.6 on quad-core iMac.

Noticed unusually heavy CPU usage in Activity Monitor, investigated, found process "node" was using 100%+ of a CPU.     

Tried "get info" on the "node" process,  found its parent was  DW.  Tried to look at "Open Files and Ports", but this was difficult because it appears that a process of this name would be spawned, would run for some small number of seconds and would terminate, deleting "Open Files and Ports".   Then a new process of the same name would be created, and so on...

Eventually I got a capture of "Open Files and Ports" data.   The process seemed to be scanning the entire local file tree of "Site B" -- which I work on very rarely. 

What was I doing in DW at the time?   Nothing.  It was open and in the background.   No DW files were open.  I was using the Finder, Preview, and LibreOffice to organize files, that's all.

What did I do most recently in DW?   In the last hour or so I closed all open files and I switched to "Site B",  which I work on very rarely. (The last time I edited anything in "Site B" was 4 months ago.) I viewed a directory on the server (remote) "Site B", viewed the local version of the same directory, then left DW to do something else.

In the last several days I updated DW to the latest version.  Since then, I updated MacOS to 10.12.6, and --yes-- I restarted the Mac to do that.

I finally succeeding in banishing process "node" by doing this:  I switched DW back to "Site A", a much larger site which I edit every day.   A few seconds later, process "node" disappeared from the task list and has not reappeared in the last hour.  CPU use is "normal".

So... what's going on?

From my point of view,  it appears that DW is maintaining something for each site.   If something is far out of date, DW will scan the entire local site to make it current.   "Site B" was far out of date --and there has been one DW revision, maybe two-- since I last opened it, so DW needed to do a complete local scan.

My "Site A" was up to date, so there was no need to scan it at all.  

What's the purpose of the scan?

In the thread above you (Niharika Gupta) said "We use Node to compile less/sass files and for Device Preview..."   Could you say a bit more?   Is it possible that Node encountered difficulties scanning and processing "Site B"?  Maybe Node would eventually complete the scan, but it might take many minutes or even hours?  (A good excuse to go out for a long lunch?)

Note:  I briefly read the wikipedia descriptions of  "less" and "sass"  but that's all I know. I have no idea how this applies  as I don't use any css preprocessor commands.  I don't use Device Preview, either.

Eventually, I'm going to need to work on "Site B" --and even-more neglected "Site C" and "Site D" etc. -- so I have a strong interest in proactively solving this mystery beforehand.  I'd very much appreciate your help.   Please contact me by PM if there's anything I can do from here.  I may be able to trigger this problem simply by switching DW back to "Site B".

Thanks,

Henry

[Niharika_Jha]

Hi,

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

So while trying scenarios from other users who are facing the same "Node Process CPU Spike", we have cornered the case when the site is on a remote location/network drive then in most cases we see the CPU spike. We are in a way, in the middle of fixing this and we would like to know if your sites, Site A  and Site B are also on remote locations like Dropbox, One drive etc. ? or any one of them is on remote locations?

Regards,

Niharika Gupta

Adobe Dreamweaver

[barbrab]

If by "remote" you are including Creative Cloud, then I can get behind this. However I have no sites that I work on remotely other than in Creative Cloud, and even that is with syncing turned off because it's such a huge resource hog.

[Niharika_Jha]

Hi,

So will it be fine to say that both of your sites A and B are on Creative Cloud? Can you share us the screenshot of your site-setup dialog, does it look like the one below?

Regards,

Niharika Gupta

Adobe Dreamweaver

[barbrab]

It does.

[Niharika_Jha]

Hi,

Thank you for the screenshot.

We will be taking into account "Creative Cloud" as well when we test the fix.

Regards,

Niharika Gupta

Adobe Dreamweaver

[fastasleep]

Adding to the thread too... Sitting here wondering why my Mac won't quiet down as I'm not doing anything actively since waking it up.  Click on the battery and see under Using Significant Energy: Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator. Guess how many windows are open in all three combined? Zero.

Check Activity Monitor, and Dreamweaver is churning away at ~120% CPU, by far the most active process (node). When I click on the process and look at open ports and files, it seems to be traversing my entire local site files list. This never seems to end. It seems to drop away and come back periodically under a different process ID, so not sure if it keeps starting over or what.

I just switched to a much smaller site in the Files panel, and this all stopped. Switched to a few other sites, and not seeing much CPU usage. Dreamweaver's now using 4-5%.  Just switched back to the original much larger site directory, and it's back to ~120% CPU and fans are churning away.

So my scientific conclusion on this after ten minutes of research is: the node process is choking on my large dev server directory, which is 1.62GB and has 25,115 items in it. Whether that's due to a file, file name, number of files, I have no idea.

I'm not sure if that's everyone's problem, but it sounds likely it might be related. My advice for anyone frustrated by Dreamweaver and Adobe's glacial pace at bug fixing, check out Coda.

[cbielich1]

Exactly my situation

[hen3ry]

Niharika Gupta:

Thanks for your attention.

> we would like to know if your sites, Site A  and Site B are also on remote locations like Dropbox, One drive etc. ? or any one of them is > on remote locations?

No, none.   All the files for Site A and Site B are local, on my Mac's hard disk drive.  In no case do I ask DW to access any cloud-hosted file.   I do use various Cloud services for completely independent purposes.  I do not use Creative Cloud.

So, it looks like the "Node Process CPU Spike" in my case cannot be attributed to Cloud access overhead.

Thanks,

Henry

[Niharika_Jha]

Hi,

All the users who have reported this issue on the forums are having their sites on remote locations like Dropbox, Creative Cloud etc. and we have also cornered this case at our end that the issue is only reproducible in this scenario and not on local drive.

In your case, can you share a video clip demonstrating the issue happening so that we can extract more information? Also, for your information- Node process handles Linting, LESS/SASS compilation, Device Preview etc. in Dw, so you might want to detail us if you are using these.

For all users- if the Node process spikes and goes above 100% but then comes back to normal then this is not the issue we are looking for, this is a normal usecase that the operation used the Node process and then when you were no longer continuing that operation, Node became normal. We are only looking out for issues where it gets stuck at 100% and above and does not come down- to confirm such a case you can open an html file and introduce some errors- you will see that Linting won't work because Node process is stuck.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Niharika Gupta

Adobe Dreamweaver

[barbrab]

There are lots of video clips on these threads, look back. I don't understand how a video clip is going to tell you anything our descriptions haven't. Right now my computer sounds like a Harrier attempting lift off. I actually have linting turned off, so I don't think that's the problem either.

A fix for this issue soon is in order, I have sites to build and I spend a lot of money to "borrow" this program from you on a monthly basis. Please make it functional. I don't mean to sound snarky, but this thread, and the others dealing with the same issue, dates back months and you are still in the information gathering stage?

[darkemily]

• I haven't been using LESS/SASS, device preview etc, when this has happened, only PHP and regular CSS files.
• It's still happening even though I had an Adobe technician remote in to my computer and change my settings etc
• I've tried using this under many different settings, Dropbox entirely deactivated, CC deactivated, reorganised a file structure, etc etc and still no use. 

The CPU goes up to 100% for an extended period of time, not like what happens at startup or whatever. My Mac gets very hot and loud, whirring away, and eventually I have to close the application.

As barbrab​ has said, for a premium application which many of us rely on, it's been going on for far too long. Currently I have about 5 projects on the go that I use DW for, so this issue really is a daily problem which frequently interrupts my work. Please help!

[barbrab]

This thread from 2014, still unresolved, is also a current issue on my Macbook Pro and I suspect it's related in some way. I only use sync on a limited basis because it causes my CPU to amp up to at least 112% for extended periods of time. I use a Windows machine from time to time and CC Desktop brings that system to a near complete halt.

These people have been looking for answers for 2 years:

Core Sync Process Choking Systems

[cbielich1]

Yeah I hear ya, maybe no one complained about it enough until now. We have to keep blowing up this thread until its fixed

[hen3ry]

Niharika Gupta:

Thank you for your reply:

> All the users who have reported this issue on the forums are having their sites on remote locations

Well, no, I seem to be having exactly the same problem, "Node Process Spiking" using only local access.  To repeat, my local sites consists only of files stored locally, on my Mac's hard drive.  No DW-accessed files on any kind of cloud server.

> Can you share a video clip demonstrating...

Sure, I guess, but how?  I know nothing about capturing real-time operations on my Mac.  If you can direct me to a simple tutorial, I can give it a try.  

Please also be specific about what you want me to capture.   You didn't ask me to submit the text I managed to get from Task Manager-->node-->Open Files and Ports.  What do you expect to learn from a video that you cannot learn from this text?

>  Also, for your information- Node process handles Linting...

Aha, that's mentioned in a much earlier post on this thread, I see now.  I missed that.  Linting?  OK,  I know what that means with respect to procedural programming, but I did not see this added to DW. I checked your on-line documentation

      https://helpx.adobe.com/dreamweaver/using/linting-code.html#main-pars_header

Then I checked my DW Preferences-->Linting.   Linting is enabled.  I can't recall doing that...  Is it enabled by default?

Bottom line:

1)  Looking at your list of things that can spawn the Node Process: Linting, LESS/SASS compilation, Device Preview and "etc." Are these tasks that background-scan files other than those currently open for edit?   If these apply ONLY to currently open files, and currently open files are "few" and "small" then the Node Process should be completed essentially instantly.   Or do these --any of them-- periodically scan entire sites?

2)  To explore the problem here, with respect to Linting, would it make sense for me to disable Linting, then

i) try to trigger Node Process Spiking by switching to my rarely accessed "Site B"?  

ii) Return to "Site A", enable Linting, and switch again to "Site B".  Do I see Spiking?

If i) falls to trigger Spiking and ii) succeeds,  does this help you diagnose the issue?

3) I examined my capture of  Task Manager-->node-->Open Files and Ports during Node Process Spiking.  I searched for "Lint" "LESS" and "SASS".  No hits on the first two, but this appears a few lines from the start of the log:

/Applications/Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2017/Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2017.app/Contents/Resources/node-core/services/Compilers/node_modules/node-sass/vendor/darwin-ia32-node-0.10/binding.node

Does this demonstrate that SASS is the cause of the spiking?   To repeat, I do NOT use SASS.  How can I disable it entirely?

Thanks,

Henry

[k1n6]

This issue does definitely not have anything to do with remote sites,

myself and none of the other posts mention anything about the sites being

remote.

I keep my files locally and use the ftp feature to deploy remotely and this

occurs way before that

[pennetr8]

I've had this same issue for about a year.

I used to be able to reduce the node usage by creating a new file or two, but that no longer works.

This was never a problem in the past.

If enough of us complain about it maybe they will dedicate adequate resources to solving it in a timely manner and stop leaning on us so much to do their testing and investigations for them. I don't have the time to read all of what has transpired, but obviously it is a long standing issue. I've had a lot of other problems with bugs in the recent versions. Seems that QC has gone down the tubes. I've been using Dw since v.2 in the late 90's.

[pennetr8]

Also try entering a few characters in a new file to kill the node activity. It may take a minute or two.

Other problems I have with Dw is that the code doesn't always appear in code view, it's an empty area. Pasting text into code view doesn't work well. Text selected in live or document view is not automatically centered in code view: it's usually at the very bottom. I don't like the interface color options. Linting doesn't seem to work anymore (yes, I've enabled it in prefs). In code view, if I want to select a range of code by line numbers, selecting one line and then Shift-clicking on another line number doesn't work. ...I've got other problems with it, too but I don't have the time to follow up on it all. My hope is that enterprising people at Adobe are working on these matters. It's also unstable.

Dw 2017.5

[fastasleep]

Also, what's up with the Russian nesting doll going on here:

[barbrab]

I'm wondering if we can get an update on this situation. I'm sure that after a year of complaints you have surely worked out what the issue is and have simply forgotten to tell us what the fix is.

[jpmejia]

Hi there...

No solution yet? This issue was opened since last year.

It's happening to me now on all my Sites. Local and Remote.

Driving me crazy.

-JP

[Preran]

Hi everyone,

Thank you for providing your insights in helping the team investigate this issue. The team has identified the underlying causes, but the fix itself will require some time, and is unlikely to make its way to the next update.

I apologize for the frustration caused until a fix that provides for a seamless experience is made available. Please stay tuned for updates.

Thanks,

Preran

[jpmejia]

Thanks Preran,

Just trying to understand.

I bug that makes the app almost unusable, will take more than a year to be fixed?

I have used Adobe products for years (more than 18 years), and this is the first time that I am researching alternatives.

????

Just deleted node file.

[Preran]

Hi Jpmejia,

I am sorry you feel that way. I know that the team has put in a lot of effort in investigating this issue, and this has always been a high priority fix. If the team is requesting to wait, it is only because they want to ensure that they have covered all possibilities. If there was a previous version of DW that worked for you, I suggest using that until we have a fix available.

Thanks,

Preran

[barbrab]

Same issue here on Macbook Pro running 2017.5 build 9878.

Renaming Node doesn't help a bit.