gnome-session.log takes 8 GB in a few hours

[FM33]

Hello,

On a fresh install of saucy 64 bits, ~/.cache/upstart/gnome-session.log grows incredibly fast. 8 GB in a few hours.
Worked it around with a rm as cron task.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: upstart 1.10-0ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-15.23-generic 3.11.10
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-15-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jan 16 16:02:23 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-01-10 (5 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: upstart
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UpstartBugCategory: Session
UpstartRunningSessionCount: 1
UpstartRunningSessionVersion: init (upstart 1.10)
UpstartRunningSystemVersion: init (upstart 1.10)
upstart.upstart-file-bridge.log:
 Job got added /com/ubuntu/Upstart/jobs/unicast_2dlocal_2davahi
 Job got added /com/ubuntu/Upstart/jobs/update_2dnotifier_2dcrash
 Job got added /com/ubuntu/Upstart/jobs/update_2dnotifier_2drelease

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

There is an upstart logrotate job that runs automatically soon after session start, however, it does not (yet) run periodically to handle rogue jobs such as gnome-session. You can however run the job yourself simply enough as a non-root user:

$ start logrotate

Please attach a few lines of the output from your gnome-session log.

[Jotaarkka (iafilm)]

If I start logrotate, does it keep the gnome session.log not growing? If you have to start it several times, it is quite unconvinient. Would it then be more easy to install KDE plasma or gnome desktop. Or does the buf influence the gnome also, not just Unity?

[FM33 (foxxm)]

I can't reproduce anymore for now (an update fixed it ?)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[FM33 (foxxm)]

When the problem occurs, the content leads to nemo. I Also reported it here :
https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/518

[will (will007)]

I'm also affected by that bug, but I haven't installed nemo at all.

[Matt Falcon (falcon4)]

Also ran across this bug. It came up on my VMware system under a Windows 10 host, seemingly due to an issue with VMWare kicking network in and out very, very rapidly. Constant disk and CPU activity perked up as soon as I connected the VM to the host bridge, and the "network is disconnected" message came and went. The activity never stopped, I fell asleep (... yep), and when I came back to it, a new message about low disk space was there as well. I examined the drive and found this log file exploded to 11 GB. Googled it, found this thread.

VMWare apparently has an issue with networking in Windows 10, where bridged networking no longer works at all even with the VMWare Bridge networking service added back after the upgrade, and with VMWare repaired with the latest installer. It's a pretty clean system but it's been upgraded from one version to the next as Ubuntu's been updated over the years.

In the interest of bug-squishing, I compressed the 11GB file down to 11MB (yay, 7-Zip!), and posted it here. I'm primarily a Windows guy with fair knowledge of Linux, so hopefully this isn't a hassle to open... Dropbox has become too unreliable to use for hosting files, so I've got to post it on my OneDrive.

http://1drv.ms/1pPNTjH

Hope this helps!

[Matt Falcon (falcon4)]

As it turns out... reading my own log... it had nothing to do with the network popup. Wow. It's all about Moonshine S-Off, a rather poorly written (and very user-hostile) program that tries (and often fails) to exploit an S-Off onto an HTC phone. Rumrunner actually worked properly, anyway, with a better sense of humor on the same basic code. :P

Seems like it logs every line that goes onto a terminal - even if that line is just overwriting the previous one. And that's what blows up the log file.

[Matt Falcon (falcon4)]

God, I wish I could edit replies. A little more analysis, and it seems like I've thrown a little more of the puzzle together.

When I tried running it, I tried opening it directly from the file browser. That did nothing. But, apparently, it did actually do "something" - it ran in the background! My guess is that it got launched in a way that it hides the terminal output and expects a GUI to be created. So it kept feeding it blank lines each time it tries prompting for input. Hence, the "Type 'Yes' or 'No'", "(Yes/No)" repeating over and over until it filled the hard drive, as well as the high CPU and disk activity around the time I was trying to run it.

Also explains why I didn't have this issue when I tried fixing the networking problem later - the log file was stable after I deleted it and rebooted.

So, maybe this is caused by a terminal program being launched with the file manager trying to open it as a GUI program instead of as a terminal program, then constantly sending it blank responses for each input, and the program rejects those responses in an infinite loop!

[dino99 (9d9)]

That version is no more supported

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Sorry that no-one had time to resolve this bug report before the Ubuntu version expired. But a lot changes between releases, so it's possible that the bug has been fixed anyway. If you still experience the problem with a current version (e.g. 14.04 or 15.04), please reopen the report.

[MasterCATZ (mastercatz)]

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

/home/aio/.cache/upstart/gnome-session-Unity.log

just started growing insanely large @ gigs per hr with lines just containing

#>

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-session (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Bryce Nesbitt (bryce2)]

@mpt yes, this is still an issue on Ubuntu 14.04LTS.
My /home partition fills up nearly every day (bad on an SSD also because of write amplification).

-rw-r----- 3151151104 Feb 4 13:06 gnome-session-Unity.log

The log spam is useuless repetive stuff like:
(putty:29947): GLib-CRITICAL **: Source ID 67342 was not found when attempting to remove it
[0x7f2468000ec8] v4l2 demux error: dequeue error: No such device
[0x7f2468000ec8] v4l2 demux error: dequeue error: No such device
[4757:4787:0204/130259:ERROR:connection.cc(1892)] Cookie sqlite error 13, errno 0: database or disk is full, sql: UPDATE cookies SET last_access_utc=? WHERE creation_utc=?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Bryce,

Please open a fresh bug detailing exactly which messages are filling your log.

This bug is too old to ever be resolved adequately.