apport-gtk consumes 100% CPU for way too long after something crashes

[php4fan]

Something (related to Cinnamon) crashes, so the usual popup appears telling me that something crashed, and asking me whether I wanted to send a report. I choose Send.

Every time this happens, then a process called apport-gtk starts consuming 100% CPU and it goes on for several minutes, so long that I end up killing it.

There's no way there is a good reason for consuming so much CPU for so long. If you need to do such an amount of processing just to generate and send a bug report, something is deeply broken. But if the operation actually had to be that computationally expensive, then you must do it in a less intensive way so that it can go on in the background, for no matter how long, without rendering me unable to use my computer.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: apport 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-42.46-generic 5.4.44
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-42-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportLog:
 ERROR: apport (pid 2908) Wed Aug 19 18:39:29 2020: called for pid 2405, signal 11, core limit 0, dump mode 1
 ERROR: apport (pid 2908) Wed Aug 19 18:39:29 2020: executable: /usr/bin/cinnamon (command line "cinnamon --replace")
 ERROR: apport (pid 2908) Wed Aug 19 18:39:29 2020: debug: session gdbus call: (true,)

 ERROR: apport (pid 2908) Wed Aug 19 18:39:34 2020: wrote report /var/crash/_usr_bin_cinnamon.1000.crash
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.4
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CrashReports:
 640:1000:110:69556:2020-08-19 18:39:33.732794284 +0200:2020-08-19 18:39:34.732794284 +0200:/var/crash/_usr_bin_cinnamon-launcher.1000.crash
 640:1000:110:15432562:2020-08-19 18:39:34.466977487 +0200:2020-08-19 18:42:42.722667813 +0200:/var/crash/_usr_bin_cinnamon.1000.crash
CurrentDesktop: X-Cinnamon
Date: Wed Aug 19 18:42:34 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-10-11 (2503 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130424)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: apport
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-07-12 (37 days ago)

[Paul Gratz (pgratz)]

I've had the same issue for a long time as well.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Johann Haraldsson (joiharalds)]

I have this issue on Ubuntu 22.04 with apport-gtk version 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.3

[Mieszko Bańczerowski3l (mieszkoziemowit)]

The same on Ubuntu 20.04; `apport-cli --version` prints 2.20.11

[Dawid Ferenczy (ferenczy)]

I have the same issue on Ubuntu 22.04.2, `apport-gtk` version is 2.20.11.

There are 4 process of `apport-gtk` running currently and they are running for days already, taking all processing power they can. I have tried to clean up the `/var/crash` directory (simply deleting all files there - crash dump and upload files), but it didn't help, so I have also killed all those four processor-hungry processes. After that, all other apport processes (about 10 to 15 of them) ended themselves and so far nothing has started again.

I'll observe the issue further.

[Brian (brian15co)]

Encountered this on `Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS` as well.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Can you reproduce it?

[Arturas Mickiewicz (arturasmckwcz)]

the same here on 22.04, it was running 5+ minutes at 100%

[Erik Knaap (erik-knaap)]

I had a very large file (Google Chrome crash/dump) in /var/crash/ (that couldn't be processed?)

When I removed it and rebooted, the high CPU load was gone.