hud-service is consuming too much recources

[Sascha Peter]

For a couple of days now (I assume since recent Unity updates), my Laptop is performing more an more poor throughout the day. First 2-3 hours Unity is running smoothly (Dash, HUD, etc.) Afterwards, opening Dash or HUD and even switching workspaces and starting applications becomes very slow. Sometimes I have to restart lightdm from a tty-console or reboot.
Running "top" in a terminal shows that a process called "hud-service" is consuming up to 60% of CPU and RAM resources.

My hardware should be perfectly able to cope with 13.04 (Dell Latitude E5420, quad-core, 8GB RAM) and was until about two weeks before.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: unity 7.0.0daily13.04.18~13.04-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-26.38-generic 3.8.13.2
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-26-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8.1
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
Date: Mon Jul 22 13:49:15 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-04-25 (87 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130424)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sascha Peter (saschapeter73)]

I have tried an not used the HUD for one work day (8 hours) at all: all is fine.
Yesterday I used the HUD only once in the morning: CPU and RAM usage of the HUD service were increasing as described in the bug report.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Paul (i41bktob-launchpad-net)]

I just had hud-service using 457 MB of RAM (resident). And 3 hours of CPU time after running for two weeks.

[Vladimir Rutsky (rutsky-vladimir)]

Similar bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-appmenu/+bug/967879

[Jonas G. Drange (jonas-drange)]

My hud-service has been claiming 100% of the CPU for at least eight hours today. Let me know if I can help debug.

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

Jonas, what version of hud do you have installed? What version of Ubuntu are you running?

[linxpatrick (linxconsulting)]

I am running Ubuntu 14.04. hud-service is using more and more resources as time passes. The computer has been idling for about an hour and memory usage is up to 1.7 GiB and CPU usage is at 12%. By idling I actually mean that I had VirtualBox with one VM running but I was away from the computer and memory usage continued to climb. The problem doesn't seem to be related to other applications running, as stated by others.

I was alerted to the problem yesterday after using the machine all day and troubleshooting a different issue. After several hours of use, memory useage by hud-service was at 3.9 GiB.

I checked an Ubuntu 12.04.4 computer and it doesn't experience this issue.

[Michael Iltis (mgiltis)]

I still use Ubuntu 12.04 and occasionally experience the HUD problem. Just a while ago it was eating up 100% of CPU and 1 GB Ram and it calls that Normal in the system monitor. I have to shut down the machine and reboot the system and then it is back to normal.

[tom (bizgec)]

Same is happening to me. Computer was not performing in a way a 64 bit i7 should. Every operation was taking one second or more. After running top in a terminal it showed me that hud-service was using up 95% of CPU an 30% of memmory. I am using ubuntu 14.04 and two additional displays (one hdmi and one vga) attached to my labtop. After killing hud-service everything seems to work smoothly.

[Umut Erol Kaçar (umutkacar)]

I ran into this problem as well.

Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3520M CPU
16 GB RAM

hud-service is using 24% CPU and 6,9 GiB memory.

[Stephen A. Goss (postfuturist)]

This appears to be a problem in Ubuntu 16.04, where hud-service is taking up 2.4 GB of RAM after 27 days on my system.