dbus-daemon consumes 100% cpu without reason

[Sergio Benjamim]

Just login in to session, and dbus-daemon consumes 100% of cpu. Before, I did a login and logout. This problem appears randomly, not all the time.

 9107 sergio 20 0 30376 1660 1356 R 100,1 0,0 11:35.08 dbus-daemon
11692 root 20 0 433m 54m 37m S 1,0 1,4 0:05.46 Xorg
12279 sergio 20 0 1506m 78m 30m S 0,7 2,1 0:05.40 compiz
12417 sergio 20 0 553m 20m 11m S 0,7 0,6 0:00.93 gnome-terminal
13757 sergio 20 0 853m 160m 40m S 0,7 4,2 0:06.83 firefox

See sensors, dbus-daemon is heating up my laptop:

Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +68.0°C (crit = +98.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +69.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +49.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +51.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2: +69.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3: +55.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

asus-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
temp1: +6280.0°C

pkg-temp-0-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +68.0°C

---

Description: Ubuntu Saucy Salamander (development branch)
Release: 13.10
Linux sergio-X751JB 3.11.0-8-generic #15-Ubuntu SMP Fri Sep 20 04:11:26 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

dbus:
  Installed: 1.6.12-0ubuntu5
  Candidate: 1.6.12-0ubuntu5
  Version table:
 *** 1.6.12-0ubuntu5 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: dbus 1.6.12-0ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-8.15-generic 3.11.1
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-8-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.12.4-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Sep 25 04:31:14 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-09-20 (4 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Alpha amd64 (20130920)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: dbus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Petar Sredojevic (perosredo)]

Same issue - top and dbus-monitor logs attached.

[Sergio Benjamim (sergio-br2)]

In Xubuntu does not happen, only in Ubuntu (unity).

[Jason Robinson (jaywink)]

This has started to be very annoying, happens sometimes after boot. Solution is to kill dbus-daemon.

Attaching log from ubuntu-bug dbus.

[Jacques du Preez (jacques-dupreez)]

Same problem here. Ubuntu unity 13.10. 100% cpu on startup, fans kick in immediately. Have to kill dbus-deamon to correct. Checking the internet I have seen people complaining about this issue since 2009 on various distributions including Ubuntu and OpenSuse? Hope this Bug gets fixed soon, very nervy!

[Simon Tremblay (tremblaysimon)]

For information, the user was lightdm when dbus-daemon was using 100% of CPU.

[James Meek (jimmeek)]

I am having to reboot about once a week due to this bug, because I know of no way to restore normal operation after killing the dbus. Is there any way? This is nearly as bad as the old Windows Blue Screen of Death.

[Parag Warudkar (parag-warudkar)]

Here is some hopefully useful info - Perf Report data and gdb stack trace - lightdm user, 100% CPU for dbus-daemon.

Loaded symbols for /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_files.so.2
__errno_location () at ../csu/errno-loc.c:26
26 ../csu/errno-loc.c: No such file or directory.
(gdb) bt
#0 __errno_location () at ../csu/errno-loc.c:26
#1 0x000000000043ae88 in _dbus_babysitter_unref (sitter=0x181e640) at ../../dbus/dbus-spawn.c:317
#2 0x00000000004058ab in bus_pending_activation_unref (pending_activation=0x1815700)
    at ../../bus/activation.c:194
#3 0x000000000042d9ee in free_entry_data (table=0x180aec0, table=0x180aec0, entry=0x1815e80,
    entry=0x1815e80) at ../../dbus/dbus-hash.c:445
#4 _dbus_hash_table_unref (table=0x180aec0) at ../../dbus/dbus-hash.c:395
#5 0x0000000000405b8d in bus_activation_unref (activation=0x180c880)
    at ../../bus/activation.c:969
#6 0x00000000004088af in bus_context_unref (context=0x1809160) at ../../bus/bus.c:1086
#7 0x0000000000404503 in main (argc=<optimized out>, argv=<optimized out>)
    at ../../bus/main.c:650

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
perf report
---------------
Samples: 67K of event 'cycles', Event count (approx.): 37182799970
 55.43% dbus-daemon dbus-daemon [.] _dbus_babysitter_unref â
 33.54% dbus-daemon libpthread-2.17.so [.] __errno_location â
 10.88% dbus-daemon dbus-daemon [.] __errno_location@plt â

Annotation
-' â", â+" jns 36fca
-' â", â+' callq __errno_location@plt
 20.05 â", mov (%rax),%edi
 39.55 â", mov %rax,%r12
       â", cmp $0x4,%edi
-' â", â+" jne 37000
 20.20 â", test %ebp,%ebp
       â", â+" je 36fa0
-' â", test %ebp,%ebp
 20.20 â", â+" js 36fb3
       â", movl $0xffffffff,0x18(%rbx)

[Reuben Thomas (rrt)]

This looks like this bug: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=68945 which is fixed in dbus 1.6.14. 1.6.18 is in trusty, so perhaps worth trying the trusty package (as I'm about to).

[Nicholas Hinsch (nicholaa)]

Reuben,

Any luck with dbus 1.6.18 on 13.10?

[decimus (h-matthias-u)]

To #11 Nicholas, I tried the solution Reuben proposed in #10 and installed the dbus trusty packages on Ubuntu 13.10 saucy. Since then, the problem with high CPU load has not appeared again (about a week now). So it seems to work.

In particular, I installed the following:
dbus_1.6.18-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
dbus-1-dbg_1.6.18-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
dbus-1-doc_1.6.18-0ubuntu3_all.deb
dbus-x11_1.6.18-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
libdbus-1-3_1.6.18-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
libdbus-1-3_1.6.18-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
libdbus-1-dev_1.6.18-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb

[Sydney (sydneygb)]

I've been running Ubuntu 12.04 (with various de's over time) for two years and saw this error happen for the first time today. I'm currently running Gnome Shell 3.4.1, but I haven't removed Unity. My Xubuntu 12.04 with xfce 4.8 has not shown this behaviour to date.

[Tomofumi (tomofumi)]

Hi all,

I've been suffering from this bug from time to time in 12.04 LTS, and today I finally found out the culprit that cause the high cpu% in my case. According to "strace -p" dump of the dbus-daemon, the problem seems related to the org.kde.nepomuk.* service:

recvmsg(111, 0xbfd5b658, MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
sendmsg(111, {msg_name(0)=NULL, msg_iov(2)=[{"l\3\1\1J\0\0\0\203\243\353\6u\0\0\0\6\1s\0\6\0\0\0:1.175\0\0\4\1s\0)\0\0\0org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.LimitsExceeded\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\5\1u\0\333f\354\6\10\1g\0\1s\0\0\7\1s\0\24\0\0\0org.freedesktop.DBus\0\0\0\0", 136}, {"E\0\0\0The maximum number of pending replies per connection has been reached\0", 74}], msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=0}, MSG_NOSIGNAL) = 210
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, {2505630, 149771846}) = 0
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=5, events=POLLIN}, {fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN}, {fd=9, events=POLLIN}, ...(skip)...{fd=13, events=POLLIN}, {fd=132, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}, {fd=21, events=POLLIN}, {fd=23, events=POLLIN}, {fd=141, events=POLLIN}], 141, -1) = 1 ([{fd=111, revents=POLLIN}])
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, {2505630, 150552531}) = 0
recvmsg(111, {msg_name(0)=NULL, msg_iov(1)=[{"l\1\0\0010\0\0\0\334f\354\6\177\0\0\0\1\1o\0\25\0\0\0/org/freedesktop/DBus\0\0\0\6\1s\0\24\0\0\0org.freedesktop.DBus\0\0\0\0\2\1s\0\24\0\0\0org.freedesktop.DBus\0\0\0\0\3\1s\0\f\0\0\0GetNameOwner\0\0\0\0\10\1g\0\1s\0\0+\0\0\0org.kde.nepomuk.services.nepomukfileindexer\0\0\0.nepomukstorage',path='/servicecontrol',interface='org.kde.nepomuk.ServiceControl',member='serviceInitialized'\0\0\0\0\0\0(...skip...)\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 2048}], msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 192

$ ps -ef | grep nepom
user 16909 26479 0 10:50 pts/0 00:00:00 grep --color=auto nepom
user 19923 19879 0 Jan05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/akonadi_nepomuk_feeder --identifier akonadi_nepomuk_feeder
user 19950 1 1 Jan05 ? 05:08:31 /usr/bin/nepomukserver
user 19954 19950 0 Jan05 ? 00:00:02 /usr/bin/nepomukservicestub nepomukstorage
user 19968 19950 0 Jan05 ? 00:00:01 /usr/bin/nepomukservicestub nepomukfilewatch
user 19969 19950 0 Jan05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/nepomukservicestub nepomukbackupsync
user 19970 19950 0 Jan05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/nepomukservicestub nepomukfileindexer
user 19971 19950 0 Jan05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/nepomukservicestub nepomukqueryservice

So i tried to stop kde programs, and attempt to restart this nepomukserver, I've tried to kill by pid, it does not respond. So I tried to "kill -HUP", it starts restart itself and the 100% cpu goes away now.

Hope this helps someone with the similar problem as me.

[Yo (yleduc)]

Hi
Have you tried using the d-feet Install d-feet tool?

[Richard (rlettich)]

I'm not sure if this bug is the same, but I have cpu use of 50-90%. It says dbus is only using ~15% though, but it is the top task. It is also forking alot.

To reproduce, I dont know the repo's, but I installed

 sudo apt-get install elementary-theme elementary-icon-theme elementary-default-settings elementary-desktop

and purging those packages caused this to happen. reinstalling those packages "fixes" it.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

lowering the importance, there aren't been other reports about that and low activity here over the recent years, unsure if that's still an issue but it's not a critical one for Ubuntu if it impacts a low number of users