timidity daemon using 100% CPU

[Neal McBurnett]

About 2 days after a reboot of my 14.04 system, the timidity daemon suddenly started using 100% of the cpu. That happened early in the morning when I was asleep, but I tracked it down using collectl data. I saw nothing unusual in the syslog at that time.

This has happened to me twice, and to other users, as documented at

  http://askubuntu.com/questions/828299/timidity-hogging-cpu-ubuntu-16-04/844221

I'm using Ubuntu Trusty 14.04 with kde.

Description: Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS
Release: 14.04

timidity:
  Installed: 2.13.2-40.2

I had to use sudo to kill it:

  sudo killall -9 timidity

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: timidity 2.13.2-40.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-45.66~14.04.1-generic 4.4.21
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-45-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.21
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Tue Nov 1 10:09:12 2016
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-01-01 (669 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140722.2)
SourcePackage: timidity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Todd Chaffee (tc-toddbiz)]

This affects me on Ubuntu 16.04. I start timidity from the command line and then the system gets very slow. The output of 'top' shows timidity taking all the CPU.

[Tim Lowery (talowery-us-gmail)]

This affects me on UbuntuStudio 17.10. The only way I have found to resolve it is stopping jackd. Timidity seems to run automatically when I start jackd (via running qjacktcl). Is there a way to prevent timidity from running automatically?