Hi Scott,

I do also work for Salesforce.
It would be an interesting indication if this symptom was *only*
experienced at Salesforce.
It would tell about interactions with specific tools we use.
What could it be?

- puppet
- avahi
...

In fact below is the list of binaries having a pid on my box now.

Now, when I killed my running dbus-daemon processes last time, I got a
crash of compiz:

/usr/bin/compiz
SIGSEGV in_IceTransClose
DistroCodeName: precise
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/969078

with a popup:

Apport
'precise' is no longer under development

Maybe this is an indication?
Thanks
Marc

$ ps -ef | perl -nle 'next if /^UID/;$h{$1}++ if
m%^.{48}\[?([^\s\]/:]+)%;END{print for sort keys %h}'
NetworkManager
acpid
ata_sff
atd
avahi-daemon
bash
bdi-default
bitlbee
bluetooth-applet
cdcwatch
compiz
cpuset
cron
crypto
dbus-daemon
dbus-launch
devfreq_wq
ecryptfs-kthrea
edac-poller
ext4-dio-unwrit
firefox
flush-252
fsnotify_mark
gnome-pty-helper
gnome-screensaver
gnome-session
gnome-terminal
hd-audio0
hd-audio1
iprt
irq
jbd2
kblockd
kdevtmpfs
kdmflush
khelper
khubd
khugepaged
khungtaskd
kintegrityd
kpsmoused
krfcommd
ksmd
ksoftirqd
kswapd0
kthreadd
kthrotld
kworker
lightdm
md
migration
nautilus
netns
nm-applet
nmbd
perl
ps
rpcbind
rsyslogd
scsi_eh_0
scsi_eh_1
scsi_eh_2
scsi_eh_3
scsi_eh_4
scsi_eh_5
scsi_eh_6
sendmail
smbd
ssh
su
sync_supers
telepathy-indicator
udisks-daemon
update-notifier
upstart-socket-bridge
upstart-udev-bridge
watchdog
whoopsie
zeitgeist-datahub

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 12:22 AM, Scott Conger <email address hidden> wrote:
> We're also seeing this at my workplace (Salesforce) and people are
> running scripts to clean up the processes. It's irritating as it can
> spawn enough processes to prevent you from remotely logging in.
>
> I hit this page when googling around looking for a solution.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1273258
>
> Title:
>   Hundreds of dbus-daemon processes
>
> Status in "dbus" package in Ubuntu:
>   New
>
> Bug description:
>   I find a growing number of root owned dbus-daemon processes.
>   Eventually, this results in a 'too many processes' error preventing something to fork, e.g. a login.
>
>   They get created by batches of 4, every 30 minutes on my box.
>   My box is a puppet client, so that these 30 minutes are not in a local cron tab.
>   The pids are 11 units apart (when the box is otherwise idle).
>   The command line is:
>   //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>
>   ~# ps -fu root | grep dbus-daemon | grep -v grep | tail -8
>   root     17509     1  0 11:25 ?        00:00:00 //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>   root     17520     1  0 11:25 ?        00:00:00 //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>   root     17531     1  0 11:25 ?        00:00:00 //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>   root     17542     1  0 11:25 ?        00:00:00 //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>   root     17972     1  0 11:55 ?        00:00:00 //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>   root     17983     1  0 11:55 ?        00:00:00 //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>   root     17994     1  0 11:55 ?        00:00:00 //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>   root     18005     1  0 11:55 ?        00:00:00 //bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 4 --print-address 6 --session
>
>   I reported this first to https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=74114
>   and was told to report it to ubuntu instead.
>   Here were some additional comments:
>
>   The symptoms you described probably mean that something running as
>   root is either running /usr/bin/dbus-launch, or attempting to access a
>   D-Bus session via the autolaunch: transport while under a transient
>   X11 session, 4 times every 30 minutes.
>
>   If this machine does not intentionally run an X11 GUI or a D-Bus
>   session, uninstalling the dbus-x11 package or making /usr/bin/dbus-
>   launch non-executable might work around this. Don't do that if you use
>   an X11 GUI environment, though.
>
>   Since 1.4.8, dbus autolaunch has only been effective when DISPLAY is
>   set and non-empty, so if this is autolaunch, an X11 session must be
>   involved somehow.
>
>   ProblemType: Bug
>   DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
>   Package: dbus 1.4.18-1ubuntu1.4
>   ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-58.88-generic 3.2.53
>   Uname: Linux 3.2.0-58-generic x86_64
>   NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
>   ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.6
>   Architecture: amd64
>   Date: Mon Jan 27 14:51:19 2014
>   MarkForUpload: True
>   ProcEnviron:
>    SHELL=/bin/bash
>    PATH=(custom, no user)
>    LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>   SourcePackage: dbus
>   UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/1273258/+subscriptions