gnome-settings-daemon starts using 70% CPU, requires logout/login to get system responsive again

[Steve McGrath]

Binary package hint: gnome-settings-daemon

On Ubuntu 9.10 with all updates, gnome-settings daemon will sometimes start using around 70% CPU continuously, slowing the entire system down. The only way to get back to normal is to logout/login.

If I kill gnome-settings-daemon and restart it, it goes right back up to 70% CPU.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Nov 16 11:23:39 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: gnome-settings-daemon 2.28.1-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-15.50-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-settings-daemon
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-15-generic i686

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:
1. Is this reproducible?
2. If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug? Be as detailed as possible.
This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[Steve McGrath (smcgrath23)]

I'll try to be more specific here.

This is reproducible, for me at least, although not reliably.

At some point while using my computer, I notice a slowdown, and discover that gnome-settings-daemon is eating CPU. Nothing in particular that I do seems to trigger it.

When this occurs, if I kill gnome-settings-daemon, and restart it in a terminal, it immediately jumps back to its previous high CPU usage. Logging out and logging in again restores it to normal.

As a triager myself, I realize that this probably isn't enough useful information to go on.

Next time this occurs, I will try to restart gnome-settings-daemon with strace and get some more solid data, if that would be useful.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Please try to obtain a backtrace following the instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and upload the backtrace (as an attachment) to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

Thanks

[shegman (shegman)]

not enough that the cpu usage rises up to 70-80% it's eating up almost my entire memory too. almost 80% everytime.

[shegman (shegman)]

sorry, i forgot to say, that i'm running the 10.10 beta

gnome-settings-daemon:
  Installed: 2.32.0-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 2.32.0-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 2.32.0-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status