[keyboard]: gnome-settings-daemon consumes 100% cpu (and blinking numlock)

[James]

Impact:
gnome-settings-daemon uses 100% cpu for ever in some cases

Test Case:
Seems to happen sometimes after docking or connecting with vnc, try to connect to the machine using a vnc client a few times and check there is no numlock cycle and cpu usage loop starting

Regression potential:
The numlock state could be wrongly set,restored on login in some cases

-----------------

Original message:
-----------------

I don't know how to reproduce this bug, but after varying amounts of normal usage of my laptop, I notice gnome-settings-daemon is consuming 100% (approx) CPU.

I am not sure how to restart gnome-settings-daemon, I tried opening a terminal and running gnome-settings-daemon again but this crashes my system - my external monitor switches off and my laptop locks up. I am able to reboot with SysRq+REISUB.

Sorry I cannot provide more information - it happens twice now, maybe someone can tell me how to get more information for the next time this happens.

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu precise (development branch)
Release: 12.04

$ apt-cache policy gnome-settings-daemon
gnome-settings-daemon:
  Installed: 3.4.0-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 3.4.0-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 3.4.0-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: gnome-settings-daemon 3.4.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-20.33-generic 3.2.12
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-20-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.95-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Mar 30 17:16:02 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta amd64 (20120301)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-settings-daemon
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Jakob Unterwurzacher (jakobunt)]

Backtrace available at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/949878/comments/3 thanks to Ahmed El-Mahmoudy

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, is g-s-d the only process using cpu? what were you doing before that starting? it could be something spamming g-s-d with config changes or pulseaudio acting crazy or something ...

the stacktrace is not useful it just shows a process waiting in poll

[James (jamesasgrim)]

My normal use includes running Google Chrome, Eclipse PDT, terminal, CXOffice, Spotify/Last.fm, Pidgin, Gedit. I cannot pinpoint a particular action I'm taking that causes it, I just notice that my laptop fan is going crazy, I check the process list and gnome-settings-daemon is up there using 100%.

You mentioned it could be pulseaudio - I do listen to last.fm/Spotify (both Linux clients), so perhaps that could be the trigger?

[software-schlosser (software-schlosser)]

To me it happens even after a fresh reboot before any application is started.

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Description of problem:
When I leave the computer on overnight, it is often in the morning discover the computer hangs and constantly swap, and the processes of gnome-settings-daemon and dconf consume all CPU resources.

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 577019
htop

[James (jamesasgrim)]

It's just happened again.

I ran strace on it and it seems like it's in a loop doing this:

futex(0x1184820, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 2, NULL) = 0
futex(0x1184820, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 2, NULL) = 0
futex(0x1184820, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 2, NULL) = 0
futex(0x1184820, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 2, NULL) = 0
futex(0x1184820, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 2, NULL) = 0
futex(0x1184820, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 2, NULL) = 0
etc.

and occasionally I see:
futex(0x1184820, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 0

[Sander Kleykens (diod631)]

I'm seeing the same thing: gnome-settings-daemon consumes 100% cpu. It also keeps turning num lock on and off rapidly. The num lock toggling doesn't show a clear pattern, but it does appear to happen more often when I'm typing or using media keys (such as volume up and down).
When I kill the daemon, the num lock toggling seems to stop.

[yannis (yannis-lg)]

With 12.04 clean install ,
After screensaver activation :
 gnome-settings-daemon 100% cpu + high disk acces + keyboard led blinking

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

is everybody getting there after using the screensaver?

[Sander Kleykens (diod631)]

No. All I have to do is boot up ubuntu 12.04 and log in. It doesn't (always?) happen right away though, it usually starts after I've used my media keys to reduce/increase volume (that might just be a coincidence though). Logging out and back in doesn't seem to help although it does stop for as long as I'm at the login screen (I assume gnome-settings-daemon stops when you logout).

Also, the problem appears to stop after a while: gnome-settings-daemon calms down and the num lock toggling stops.

[José Illescas Pérez (yoburtu)]

My Ubuntu box 12.04 at work has 100% cpu usage with gnome-settings-daemon, with or without screensaver. The installation is clean from today.

Regards.

[Andriy Beregovenko (silentjet)]

Have the same issue. How can I collect useful information?(or what info should I collect?)
Have 12.04 x86_64, Core i5 650 CPU...

[testman57 (testman57fr)]

Hello,

Just to chime in that I happen to observe this exact problem on a 32bit ubuntu 12.04 version...
A blank screensaver was running, but I could not say when this cpu usage appeared exactly, I will keep an eye on it...

[Jaime (jaime-parada)]

Hi,

     I have the same problem. My installation of Ubuntu 12.04 is fresh. The machine is a Dell Vostro 400.

[Br. Francis Therese Krautter (br-ftherese)]

I'm experiencing this problem too. On Ubuntu 11.10 - this problem only started recently however, like in the past couple of weeks maximum, perhaps it was due to the recent version of some software in apt. If someone could indicate how to provide useful information for bug I would oblige.

[Br. Francis Therese Krautter (br-ftherese)]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I simply terminate the process and when it restarts itself it remains calm for a while. I have yet to notice a particular trigger that sets it off.

[Aatish (aatish)]

Same issue here, Ubuntu 12.04 on a Thinkpad X220. After resuming from suspend, the volume icon on the unity bar showed a dashed line (---), and top informed me that gnome-setting-daemon was using up more than 100% of my cpu.

[Cedric Meury (cm-wurmlo)]

Same problem here, after a fresh install of 12.04, one reboot and leaving the system running for several hours. kill -9 helped.

[Loban Rahman (mambazo)]

HP Probook 4630s, 8GB ram.

1. Can confirm gnome-settings-daemon taking 100% cpu. No other particular apps running with high CPU.
2. Can confirm the num-lock blinking rapidly.
3. Also, caps-lock sometimes gets reversed (i.e. ALL CAPS with no caps lock light, and no caps with caps lock light on.
4. Logging out and in stopped the behavior. Dunno when it might start again.

[Patrick Henning (phen93)]

I am also encountering this bug. For me it seems to be triggered by use of volume keys on keyboard, which correlates with what is discussed in this thread:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=230568
A temporary workaround on fedora was to disable the media keys functionality of gnome. So I'm thinking this is an issue with gnome more so than ubuntu itself.

[kamahat (kamahat)]

also concerne. my computer was light on all night with nothing to do and it's th e1st consumming process, a full core for itself

[John Clark (clarkjc)]

When gnome-settings-daemon is doing this, I find this logged to ~/.xsession-errors continually until I kill it:

-----
(gnome-settings-daemon:2062): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

(gnome-settings-daemon:2062): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

(gnome-settings-daemon:2062): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

** (gnome-settings-daemon:2062): WARNING **: Timeout was reached

** (gnome-settings-daemon:2062): WARNING **: Timeout was reached

** (gnome-settings-daemon:2062): WARNING **: Timeout was reached
-----

[Greg Grimes (thespis)]

I too am seeing this bug. I noticed that I had the Ubuntu One application open when it was going crazy. I closed that app and killed the process(not sure if I really needed to do that) and the symptoms went away. Hope this might help.

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 582274
htop

[kamahat (kamahat)]

I've got the same issue with 2 differents computers on precise 12.04
gnome-settings-daemon saturated one core à 100%

Here is the result of : sudo strace -p 2425 -f -o temp/gnomes-settings-demon.trace

[kamahat (kamahat)]

The bug also seems to exist on fedora : https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=811902

[kamahat (kamahat)]

in the log of ~/.xsession-errors

(gnome-settings-daemon:2425): color-plugin-WARNING **: unable to get EDID for xrandr-DVI-I-1: unable to get EDID for output

(gnome-settings-daemon:2425): color-plugin-WARNING **: unable to get EDID for xrandr-DVI-I-2: unable to get EDID for output
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Autoprobing TCP port in (all) network interface
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Listening IPv6://[::]:5900
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Listening IPv4://0.0.0.0:5900
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Autoprobing selected port 5900
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18)
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Re-binding socket to listen for VNC connections on TCP port 5900 in (all) interface
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Listening IPv6://[::]:5900
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Listening IPv4://0.0.0.0:5900
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Clearing securityTypes
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18)
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Clearing securityTypes
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18)
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Advertising authentication type: 'No Authentication' (1)
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Re-binding socket to listen for VNC connections on TCP port 5900 in (all) interface
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Listening IPv6://[::]:5900
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Listening IPv4://0.0.0.0:5900
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Clearing securityTypes
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Clearing authTypes
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18)
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Advertising authentication type: 'No Authentication' (1)
07/05/2012 07:59:22 Advertising security type: 'No Authentication' (1)

(vino-server:2625): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent.

(vino-server:2625): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent.

(compiz:2568): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_client_add_dir: assertion `gconf_valid_key (dirname, NULL)' failed

Initializing unityshell options...done
Setting Update "icon_size"
Setting Update "show_desktop_icon"
Setting Update "num_launchers"
Setting Update "launcher_capture_mouse"

[...]
(gnome-settings-daemon:2425): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

(gnome-settings-daemon:2425): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

(gnome-settings-daemon:2425): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

[Mike M (mikem-6)]

Hello,

Same problem here, upgrades Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04 last week:
- /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon using 100% CPU after back from screen-saver
- Keyboard "NumLock" blinking very fast
- If kill the gnome-settings-daemon if came back and if screen-saver runs again the bug repeats...
(my keyboard is a Dell Model: SK-8135, don't know if matters)

I also notice something strange, when running "/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon --debug" manually I can see the output messages, and just by hitting "NunLock" on my keyboard I get the message:

"(gnome-settings-daemon:6711): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed"

Same message that keeps repeating when the gnome-settings-daemon goes crazy and start consuming 100% CPU.

Workaround?! Maybe, removing the keyboard plugin file from the g-s-d and restarting the daemon:

$ sudo mv /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin ~/
$ kill <gnome-settings-daemon-PID>
kill it just to re-start the daemon, of if you're running by hand as me, just CTRL+C and start it again.

Well... after that I can lock the screen, let the screen-saver starts, hit "NunLock" on my keyboard and I don't get the error.
I just did that 40 minutes ago, I could be wrong, just get excited to post it because the error message when hitting "NunLock" disappeared.

Cheers!

[Christian Mertes (mertes)]

I experience this bug with my thinkpad-x40 too. But i can only reproduce it with this setting:

1. on my desktop (12.04) is a synergy server running (1.4.8-1~getdeb1)
2. on my laptop (12.04) is a synergy client running (1.4.8-1~getdeb1)
3. on my desktop the numlock is activated
4. I go from the desktop to the laptop via synergy and press any number from the num-pad.

Then on the laptop gsd says repetitive till i kill it:

"(gnome-settings-daemon:6711): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed"

But if i press direktly the numlock on my laptop i get only once the message for each hit an thats it.

[Lealcy B. Junior (lealcy)]

Same bug here. Started after I pressed the Num Lock "0" and "Del" at same time by mistake. Killing gnome-settings-daemon doesn't solve the issue because it auto run again and keeps bugging.

[kamahat (kamahat)]

the comment of "Lealcy B. Junior (lealcy) " make me think it has something to do with keyboard shortcut define in gnome.

When the symptom appears, the numlock of my keyboard begins to blink. If I do a [left shift]+[left control]+[num lock] it calms down for a few moment. Can someone confirm it works for him ?

I remember there is a shortcut for "using mouse with the keyboard", maybe searching around this ?

[Fabio (fabio-redhat-bugs)]

Same bug on Ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/fedora/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/969359

[SlugiusRex (slugiusrex)]

In my original report ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/990695 )

    Observed process use 100% + CPU utilization on one core for more than 30 minutes. Memory
    grew from about 200 MB to 390 MB during this 30 minute period.

     Process status was reported as "Sleeping/futex_wait_queme_me". However, as soon as I typed 'ubuntu-bug'
     in the terminal it switched to Running ~ and then dropped its CPU usage to 60% and gave back 100MB of
     memory.

     Then while typing this comment here.... it went back up to 102% and started consuming memory again.

     See attached screenshot

It could be the case that I used [CTRL ALT PRTSCRN] to take the screenshot - which made it calm down for a moment before it started going all berserk again. I have not been able to replicate the phenomena since my original report on 2012-04-28.

[Mike M (mikem-6)]

Hey everyone,

Just to confirm what I posted before: after removing the file "/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin" and re-starting the gnome-settings-daemon I never had the problem again.... 4 days and all looking good!

Cheers,

[kamahat (kamahat)]

I've removed "/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin" we wil see in the comming days

[Nicolas Briche (nbriche)]

Happens to me too; but it only started today. No idea why it didn't before (I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 last week). Killing gnome-settings-daemon calms the system for about ten, fifteen minutes, then it starts again.

Exact same symptoms as Mike M. in #28. I followed his advice (moved keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin, killed gsd) about twenty minutes ago, and it seems to keep. Thanks for that, Mike M.

[kamahat (kamahat)]

we are 3 days later and no more issues

[brogliatto (brogliatto)]

Hi guys,
I was experiencing the same issue with Ubuntu 12.04.
I followed Mike M (mikem-6)'s recommendation and the problem seems to be resolved.
Thanks.

[Michal (michal-vanek)]

Hi,

removing "/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin" seems good, but after logout & login keyboard layout couldnt be changed/switched.
i have 2 layouts - Slovak (SK) and English (US). After plugin file deletion i was unable to switch from English to Slovak.

M.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do the people having the issue use vwmare or equivalent?

one user on IRC who ran into it said:

" ![1337780712,000,xklavier_evt_xkb.c:xkl_xkb_process_x_event/] ATTENTION! Currently cached group 0 is not equal to the current group from the event: 1
 seems to be triggered by having different numlock states inside vmware and in gnome and switching between the two"

[kamahat (kamahat)]

>>do the people having the issue use vwmare or equivalent?

no it happends to me after a fresh new install without any virtulisation techno

[SlugiusRex (slugiusrex)]

>>do the people having the issue use vwmare or equivalent?

yes for me - VMWare Workstation 8 installed on as a host on the machine ( including compiled kernel mods ). However, VMWare workstation WAS NOT RUNNING (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/990695/+attachment/3113254) at the time the problem occurred.

[heckheck (jinfo)]

I had not had any problems of this nature until I tried updating some packages this morning. Then this bug hit me. I was seeing 100% CPU utilization and strace showed a continued access to a futex. Sorry I don't have a package update list since I had to revert the system immediately (it is a production system). The system had previously been updated on May 24th. This update was a new kernel, and some X updates. Sorry I don't have more concrete information to report.

I do have VirtualBox installed on this machine, but it was inactive when the bug occurred.
I also am using VNC to connect to this computer remotely, and the problem seemed to occur shortly after connecting. Not sure if that is related or not.

[James (jamesasgrim)]

I still get this, like others I still can't pinpoint an exact cause. I also have VirtualBox installed, but was not running at the time.

[SlugiusRex (slugiusrex)]

This may have been happening as early as Maverick (Bug #658342). At that time it was marked as a duplicate "Multiple Keyboard Layouts unusable: continuously changes layout + 100% CPU usage" (Bug #625793). I have head keyboard layouts mentioned here ~ so maybe. As far as I know I am not using multiple layouts.

One thing I do observe ( probably totally irrelevant). I often hear my CPU fan pitch change when I leave my Ubuntu Desktop running long enough for the screen to go dark (especially I am running a Flash video in Youtube or something). I only mention this because I know that the idle-activation-enabled setting is related to the gnome-settings-daemon (at least to gsettings / dconf-editor) (http://askubuntu.com/questions/67355/how-do-i-completely-turn-off-screensaver-and-power-management).

I cant find what's causing it because as so as I restore the screen to normal - CPU utilization goes back to normal.

So if I wanted to do an experiment to see if it was gnome-settings-daemon was going berzerk while I was away I would need a console based way to capture CPU utilization for just that particular PID. I was thinking : "top -b -p PID" but that is a mess. Does anybody have a better idea. Or am I totally wasting my time here ??

[James (jamesasgrim)]

I am not using multiple keyboard layouts either.

[SlugiusRex (slugiusrex)]

That whole bit about the CPU fan might be totally irrelevant after all. As it turns out - that is a different bug: "[fglrx] compiz uses 100% CPU when screen turns off (spinning in glXWaitVideoSyncSGI or glXSwapBuffers)" Bug #969860 that the team is familiar with.

That bug has to do with compiz and this is settings daemon - however they may be the same if cmpiz uses settings daemon under the covers.

The solve for that bug (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11936668) is related to the AMD Catalyst Control Center - in my case I'm using the ATI Radeon5700 graphics driver. Is anybody experiencing this bug not using AMD/ATI.

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 587339
backtrace for gnome-settings-daemon 1-process

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 587340
backtrace for gnome-settings-daemon 2-process

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 587342
backtrace for dconf-service process

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 587343
backtrace for dbus-daemon process

[Dilley (curtis-dille-l)]

I am running Ubuntu 12.04 desktop 32bit, and I am having this same issue, I don't have a keyboard plugged into my system, I only use VNC to connect to it. I have VirtualBox running with 3 active VMs, I noticed it seems to happen as soon as I disconnect the VNC connection. I am able to kill -9 the PID, and it goes away. I have been watching for about 30 mins since I last disconnected and killed the PID with no re-occurrence. I hope this can help. If there is any other info needed, please let me know.

[Daniel Ryan (dfryan)]

I am running 12.04 Desktop 64bit with an ATI Radeon 6670.

I have encountered this bug as described above, dbus wildly blows up and compiz eats memory while gsd churns on to no end.

.xsession-errors contained this:
libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

I have had this problem for a long time now, and it seems to me as though it does not occur unless I have connected to my computer via VNC. It seems to occur with more frequency/immediacy if I connect via VNC while the screensaver is running and the machine is locked.

The only adequate solution has been restarting X. I have just deleted the keyboard file as detailed above, so maybe that will help.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

is everyone here using VNC?

[Jens Georg (yg-jensge)]

Apparently it's configured here (I'm phako from GimpNet)

[Johannes Rosina (johrosina)]

VNC / "Desktop Sharing" disabled here.

Ubuntu 12.04 64bit on i915 with dual screen setup and latest VirtualBox from repository.

As a workaround, removing 'keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin' as suggested by mikem-6 helped! Thanks.

[أحمد المحمودي (Ahmed El-Mahmoudy) (aelmahmoudy)]

I'm not using VNC.

--
 ‎أحمد المحمودي (Ahmed El-Mahmoudy)
  Digital design engineer
 GPG KeyID: 0xEDDDA1B7
 GPG Fingerprint: 8206 A196 2084 7E6D 0DF8 B176 BC19 6A94 EDDD A1B7

[Jan (jankanis)]

I'm having the same problem. I killed -9 g-s-d and restarted it with --debug. After the restart it's not using 100% cpu now, but it kept giving "(gnome-settings-daemon:31887): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed" about twice per second, and my num lock key was blinking. After I pressed the num lock key the blinking stopped and so did the messages from g-s-d.

I am using VNC.

[Jan (jankanis)]

O, and also dconf-service was doing lots of I/O at the same time. Not sure if it is related, but lots of dconf activity and g-s-d spinning happened before and the red hat bug mentions it as well.

[Sebastian (slovdahl)]

I'm not using any kind of VNC either.

[Mossroy (mossroy)]

I also noticed that when using VNC

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[andy (andy6715)]

On 12.04, I get this bug every time I remotely access my machine using VNC

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 589027
backtrace for gnome-settings-daemon

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 589028
backtrace for dconf worker process

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 589033
backtrace for Compositor

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 589035
backtrace for dconf-service

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

when it occurs Num Lock indicator is often blink.

[Simon Déziel (sdeziel)]

I'm observing the exact same behaviour as described in comment #8. I'm also runing 12.04. Killing g-s-d fixes the numlock issue but seems to cause X to take a lot more CPU than before.

[Simon Déziel (sdeziel)]

X CPU increase was not related to killing g-s-d finally. FYI, I'm not using VMWare or VirtualBox and don't use VNC either.

[Krastanov (krastanov-stefan)]

I do not have vpn or virtualbox and this affects me. It happened after an update today on 12.04 (however the system was not updated for a long time). I will remove virtualbox and vpn from the title.

[Matt (uvirjf2u1144g-matt-hknftjnl78lwt)]

Every time I get this problem I kill the gedit process owned by root and it goes away temporarily on 12.04x64

[kamahat (kamahat)]

The current workaround (comment #30) :

sudo mv /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin.ori
sudo pkill -9 gnome-settings-daemon

The issue is not directly related to :
- video card driver (i'm using nvidia somes are using ATI)
- not to VNC
- not to virtualization techno
- not to multiple keyboard layout.
- any new idea ?

[Alexander Pankov (pianist)]

I have the same probplem, it is not related to screen saver.

gconf-config start hard disk seeking, gnome-settings-daemon — blinking numlock and eating CPU.

Removing keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin disables keyboard layout switching.

[dsa42 (davidsangulo)]

I have the same problem.

It is not related to screen saver nor to VNC.

It is an old bug and has been around for a long time. It was originally reported in

        https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/624477

on 2010-08-26 and **INCORRECTLY** closed on 2010-09-01 by Karl Lattimer (karl-qdh). Please give that person a reprimand. I have noticed that Ubuntu routinely closes bugs without fixing them. That does not make the bug go away, it just makes people hate Ubuntu.

I do not have a
   /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0
I only have
   /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-2.0
and
   /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon

I'm running gnome 2.32.1 build date 4/14/2011
I'm running Ubuntu 11.04
I have all current updates.
I'm ALWAYS running Firefox. I have used several different versions since first noticing this problem. Currently, I'm using 13.04 I always have lots of tabs open.
I tend to keep my system running and I stay logged in for weeks at a time.

I have seen this bug for a LONG time (many months, at the least)

when gnome-settings-daemon starts taking 100% CPU, it does so for a long time (10-15 minutes), and then sometimes, stops monopolizing the CPU and g-s-d usage drops down to 0%. It later can go back to using 100%

I will try deleting the
     /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-2.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin
and
     /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin

[dsa42 (davidsangulo)]

I do not have a
    keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin
in
   /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon

I only have one in
   /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-2.0

[Pierre Quelin (pierre.quelin)]

Same bug with 2 PCs at home and at work.
Atom 330 Ubuntu(64) 12.04LTS - upgrade with all the updates.
Atom D525 Ubuntu(32) 12.04LTS - from scratch with all the updates.

The first and major bug for me. All the OS become very slow or unusable !

[Jarnau (jarnau)]

Solved renaming:
 . /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin to .old extension

Thanks!!

[Olav Vitters (ovitters)]

Not specific to Ubuntu. Had exact same thing on Mageia.

[roothorick (8-roothorick-gmail-com)]

Having the same issue on a 12.04 laptop. I have a synergy client set to start up with the system; the behavior only appears while the machine is connected to the (Win7) synergy server. I can't seem to find a particular action that causes it either; and killing the synergy server (forcing the client to disconnect) doesn't stop the problem once it's started. Even killing gnome-settings-daemon doesn't fix it; it respawns seconds later and continues killing my CPU. Only fix I've found is to completely log out.

[kamahat (kamahat)]

I did not realize before but I've had an update the 2012-05-30 and the package gnome-settings-daemon was updated (from 3.4.0 to release 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1) and the file /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin restored.

Since I have no more issue.
Confirmed for you ?

dpkg-query -s gnome-settings-daemon | grep Ver
Version: 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1

[kamahat (kamahat)]

the issue was also with gnome-settings-daemon version 3.4.1-0ubuntu1.1

[Gitti (gittimail)]

I have the same issue with num lock blinking when I start a VNC session and I use the keyboard from the remote client to write something on the affected Ubuntu machine.

[Aaron Haviland (aaron-haviland)]

I did not have this issue until today, which I think resulted from an upgrade to gnome-settings-daemon. This morning, apt-get pulled in, among other things, a new version of g-s-d:

gnome-settings-daemon:
  Installed: 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1
  Candidate: 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1
  Version table:
 *** 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1 0
        500 http://mirrors.rit.edu/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.4.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://mirrors.rit.edu/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages

However, I have not logged out since the update, and upon returning to a screensaver state, I found the bug as described above. Restarting g-s-d seems to have made the problem go away, for now. I postulate from my experience that some occurrences might result from an upgraded g-s-d not being restarted and therefore an old binary (still running) that is attempting to use new data files?

[Bill Niakas (billniakas)]

@Kamahat the bug is still here

dpkg-query -s gnome-settings-daemon | grep Ver
Version: 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.1

I tried removing the /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin ~/ the language bar indicator lost and after the upgraded version of gnome-settings-daemon the problem persists!!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could somebody having the issue report the bug to GNOME?

[Richard Rath (rcrath)]

Is it possible this is a browser script? I noticed it right away bc I have a laptop keyboard and it immediately started sending numbers instead of the letters I was typing. Is it possible that a browser script could inject this? I was at a dubious website when it happened, looking to rip audio from youtube on linux. Other people have associated it with the browser as well. This is a pretty major security issue if it is the case, as it involves settings owned by root I think. plz don't tell RIAA ;)

[Richard Rath (rcrath)]

I did the file rename in #33, logged out and back in again and restored the keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin filename and the problem did not come back. I went to my browser history and reloaded all the pages at the time the keyboard error kicked in and none of them set off the num lock error. So I'm ast least guilty of attributing cause to correlation.

on the up side, restoring the keyboard file, which appears to be just a list of languages in their own scripts to indicate keyboard layouts, did not cause the numlock problem to recur, so maybe folks who need that file can safely restore it after deleting and logging out and in. gnome settings daemon is happily sleeping at 0%cpu and numlock is off. Yay. Thank you Mike M for posting the workaround.

[Richard Rath (rcrath)]

oops sorry for repeat #79. Could not figure out how to delete. Problem came back when I restored /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin. I aam running a laptop with an external keyboard with numlock available via a fn key, with a separate number pad. This last time I think I did something on the separate number pad right before I set off the bug. tried to replicate it after logout/login, but could not.

[Pierre Quelin (pierre.quelin)]

This workaround seems to working fine for me with all the PCs :

> sudo mv /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin_bug

Thank you very much for this.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the interest guys but with all the people commenting here none is interested by open an upstream bug to help to see the issue properly resolved?!

[أحمد المحمودي (Ahmed El-Mahmoudy) (aelmahmoudy)]

Bug reported upstream: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679151

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for reporting the bug upstream, I completed with some details

[Christophe THERON (ct-phone971)]

Ubuntu 12.04 with all current updates applied (as of July 2, 2012, 0:00 GMT).

Removing the file
  /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin

is a workaround, but when you do it a number of things stop working.

For example, you cannot change the keyboard autorepeat rate.

Also, I have a Trendnet KVM that uses the NumLock LED state to detect a switch command (you press NumLock twice and the KVM switches to the other PC). With the workaround the switch does not respond anymore to the double NumLock command.

However, I think there is a workaround that does NOT exhibit these problems.

Just replace the content of the file mentionned above with this:

[GNOME Settings Plugin]
Module=keyboard
IAge=0
Name=Keyboard
Description=Keyboard plugin
Authors=
Copyright=Copyright © 2007
Website=

In other words, you remove all the translated "name" and "description" attributes and just keep the English ones. Naturally you must do this as root.

Then reboot (or maybe just restart gnome-settings-daemon).

Suddenly everything works fine, at least that is what I notice here, and it looks stable so far.

I suggest the developpers look into 3 possibilities:
- The original file is too long (buffer overflow?).
- The international characters in the original file cause some problem.
- I'm wrong. But keep on looking into this issue please!

// Christophe

[Anoop Karollil (anoop-karollil)]

I have this problem with a fresh install of 12.04.

Christophe's keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin replacement work-around did not work for me - the daemon spawned back with a vengeance and started using 100% of one of my cores. But I can live with the default autorepeat setting and am not overloading numlock, and so removing that file altogether and killing gnome-settings-daemon worked.

[Maarten Baert (maarten-baert)]

I've encountered this bug, but only on one computer. I'm running an almost identical setup on two laptops, but I've never seen this happen on the first one (after using it for months). I've seen it happen twice on the second laptop in about a week.

What I've noticed:
- Num Lock LED is blinking rapidly, numpad acts accordingly (i.e. it's unusable)
- after some time nautilus reverts to the default icon set and GTK theme (can be fixed by restarting nautilus after the system has 'calmed down')
- I get this error message every time Num Lock is pressed:
(gnome-settings-daemon:14095): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed
(this error message is repeated thousands of times in .xsession-errors)
- apparently I can 'calm the system down' by unplugging the external keyboard and plugging it back in (I had to do this twice though before it actually worked)
- both times it happened after I woke the computer (the screen was blanked). This could be completely unrelated though, because most of the time awaking it works just fine.

I'm using Linux Mint 13 (based on Ubuntu 12.04) 64-bit, and GNOME Fallback without effects.

First laptop (bug does not occur on this one):
- Dell Studio 1749, Intel i5 540M, ATI Radeon HD 5650 (using open source driver)
- does not have a Num Lock LED, I'm using indicator-keylock instead (which is also behaving a bit weird actually)
- no external keyboard

Second laptop:
- Dell Inspiron 1720, Intel Core2 Duo T9300, nVidia GeForce 8600 (using proprietary driver)
- uses an external keyboard

I will try renaming keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin.

[Sebastian (slovdahl)]

A few minutes ago I managed to trigger the bug by pressing on the num lock key. Firefox, terminator and Eclipse were running at the time.

- Ubuntu 12.04
- ATI RS780L, Radeon HD 3000 with fglrx

$ apt-cache policy gnome-settings-daemon
gnome-settings-daemon:
  Installed: 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.3

After I shut down X with sudo stop lightdm /usr/lib/dconf/dconf-service was doing a lot of I/O for a few minutes.

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Killing dconf worker process seems stop this, but something wrong after this:
Not work hot keys (Ctrl +Shift + L - lock comkputer, Prt Scr - make screenshot), decrease font...

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Killing dconf worker process seems stop this, but something wrong after this:
Not work hot keys (Ctrl +Shift + L - lock computer, Prt Scr - make screenshot), decrease font...

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 597807
backtrace for dconf worker process

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 597808
proof screenshot

[Tobias (tobias-redhat-bugs)]

see also this GNOME bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679151

FWIW: Affects me, too. pkill -STOP gnome-settings lets me use my computer again...

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

Even happens during teh day when I am away for work.

killall -9 gnome-settings-daemon helps, but is it the right way?

dconf is indeed active as well. (noticed after killing)

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

Comment 12 was observed here as well.
Comment 14 was observed here as well.

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

I am on x86_64. You too?

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

This bug makes working cumbersome.
The machine is ok in the early morning.
I leave home for work and return after 9.5-10 hours.
gnome-settings-daemon is making the numlock blink feverishly and the system slowish.
So we kill gnome-settings-daemon.
Also we kill the dconf thing.
We log out. The machine completes slowly.
We log in and stuff is mostly fine again for the rest of the day and next morning.

But is this a nice way to work with the box?
Therefor I increased severity again.

Mikhail created a very nice bug report.
Bastien: please come and help fix this.

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

I tried the dconf-editor workaround from comment 17 yesterday.
Today I found my box without the blinking numlock. gnome-settings-daemon was still consuming one full core.
So we killed that stuff.
Logged out and logged in.

Can someone please fix this without mentioning the `upstream` mantra?

[Euripides (euri-rivera)]

I'm having the same problem, but in my case gnome-settings-daemon consumes 100% of my cpu when I access the computer via remote desktop (VNC). I also have eclipse and firefox running.

[Euripides (euri-rivera)]

I kill the gnome-settings-daemon with "sudo kill -9" but as soon I click eclipse, the daemon started again.

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Sorry my previous backtraces not contain debugging symbols. Now I'm fixed.

Another well-reproduced the bug on my laptop on kitchen (it has little memory, and he constantly swaps) when I started google-chrome and evolution, and pressed the Num Lock situation is reproduced.

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 599575
proof screenshot

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 599576
new backtrace with all debug symbols

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 599577
new backtrace with all debug symbols making minute later

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

udo: may be better report to upstream?

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 599614
backtrace for dconf-service

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

Mikhail, in comment 17 Tobias mentions an upstream bug that doesn't show progress yet.
So how do we improve from here?

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

This afternoon I found a blinking numlock LED again.
So comment 22's workaround did not help at all.
What is the progress?

[Martin Vysny (vyzivus)]

It somehow seems that Unity 2D does not trigger this bug. However, I have recently switched to Unity 3D with Compiz and the problem manifested again. Ubuntu 12.04 x86-32, fully updated

[Brian Taber (btaber)]

I can confirm this bug also, custom machine, AMD 64, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS x64 fully up to date (this was upgrade from 11.04), ATI video card with FGLRX driver from additional drivers (not post release). I have been trying to pin down the cause for 3 weeks. It appears to be triggered somewhere after (not immediately) when the screen saver or power settings puts monitor to sleep (issue sometimes happening after lunch, but usually happens over night). I have tried both built in blanking and xscreensaver same result. Disabling the power settings and screen savers/blanking prevents the problem from happening. The issues I see are number lock flashing, gnome-settings-daemon using 100% CPU, and constant drive activity. Killing the process does nothing as it is respawned and problem continues. heavy disk activity is caused by ~/.xsession-errors being continuously filled with:

(gnome-settings-daemon:15439): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

this issues makes machine near-unusable. Logging out (or killing X with Alt+SysReq+K) and logging back in stops the problem.

I am about to try the suggestion in comment #33 as I do not need multiple keyboard layouts (but few of my customers do so this is not fix for them)

This does not happen every day, but it does appear to happen more often when I have my video card doing hashing calculations overnight (mining for bitcoins). I am not sure how the video relates to keyboard layout/this issue, but they appear connected somehow

[Dag (dag-redhat-bugs)]

Hi all,

this bug shows up for me as well.
FC17 x86_64 up to date.

dconf-service and gnome-settings-daemon are taking 100% CPU and doing a lot of I/O on disk.

For me it was triggered, _each time_, when using vino-server (Gnome 3 remote desktop) on the local machine (the one having the problem). I was connected from a distant client (this one did not malfunction ever) to this local machine.

I was killing both services to restore the usability of the remote machine, and it oftently crashes the session.
Eventually both services were automatically restarted and the problem was here again, and I had to kill both services again and risking a session crash.

Temporary fix :
Using dconf-editor : uncheck the check-box from org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard.remember-numlock-state.
This temporary fix works for me.
(source: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679151)

Same problem on Ubuntu : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/969359

Bye for now
Dag

[Mat (matthewb-e)]

I'm seeing this bug consistently whenever I go to the Keyboard Layout page in System Settings ("gnome-control-center region") on one of my machines when running as a normal user. Running as root it works fine (but accesses different settings so is no use to me). I do get an error "(gnome-control-center:3304) common-cc-panel-WARNING **: locale '"en_US.UTF-8"' isn't valid" when running as a normal user from a terminal but am unsure of the significance of this.

I'm currently seeing gnome-control-center at 100% CPU but previously had gnome-settings-daemon at 100% CPU instead/as well as in this circumstance. A gdb backtrace of gnome-settings-daemon pointed at a g_dbus_proxy_call_sync call to "SetXKeyboardLayouts" of "org.freedesktop.Accounts" in gsk-keyboard-manager.c. This correlates nicely with comment #33's suggestion to remove the keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin file.

This leads me down the dbus route. I see what seems to be a lot of dbus AddMatch traffic with dbus-monitor, but I'm not sure whether this is normal.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

That bug is neither private nor a security issue, please don't play with those settings

[Zlatovlac (zlatovlac)]

hi guys,
May someone will be helpful.

I have same problem on desktop after upgrade from 11.10. At same time on my netbook with clean installation 12.04 i didn't discover it.
I use 2 layouts EN and RU. And usually after i m back to office on morning, my system is dieing under gnome-settings daemon.
I read somewhere on related bug, that if delete /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin, the problem will be solved. Problem was solved, but i lost my layouts and can't to switch between them.
So i decide to restore removed file and live with bug. But after i copied file from ubuntu, which was upgraded from 10.04, problem was solved, and i didn't see it about a week.

[Mikhail (mikhail-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 603269
new backtrace for gnome-settings-daemon

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

For me a workaround (!) was the disabling of 'remember numlock state' or whatever it was called.
The issue hasn't happened for a few days now since I did that.

[udo (udo-redhat-bugs)]

(so yes I can confirm the Dag comment number 31)

[pataquets (pataquets)]

I think I triggered this just opening a localhost VNC connection by accident using Gtk VNC Viewer, but maybe it was another thing, since I was multitasking at that time.

[Peter Horsley (peter-g-horsley)]

I think comment #85 has nailed this one. I removed the translated strings from keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin and have have not seen this issue since (> 1 week of operation). Best of all, I can keep my keboard repeat rate fast and delay low (how anyone can stand slow or delayed keyboard replace I don't understand...).

[jonas (jonas73x)]

After turning on "Control pointer using they keypad" in Universal access I can trigger the bug 100% of the time by using the keypad to control the mouse when browsing the web with Google Chrome. Editing /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin as suggested in #85 seems to fix the issue (a couple of hours without an issue). Using Ubuntu 12.04 and connected with vnc to the machine where I have Chrome running.

[jonas (jonas73x)]

spoke to soon. editing the file as suggested in #85 does not fix the issue for me. removing the file completely as suggested in #33 does seem to fix it though.

[Beni Cherniavsky (cben)]

I'm seeing this on 12.04 with 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.2.
It's not only eating most of the CPU, but also tons of memory - this morning I unlocked the computer and g-s-d had 4.3GB VIRT, 3.2GB RES!
After killing, it only takes 450M VIRT and 8M RES.

[jonas (jonas73x)]

at lest for me, the problem reappears even after removing /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin and killing gnome-settings-daemon. after a period of usage as described in #98 i'm back to gnome-settings-daemon using 100% CPU.

[DeadVirus (amfcosta13)]

I was able to easily reproduce the bug by using Synergy as client in the affected machine. After using the numeric keypad and/or toggling numlock from the keyboard on the server machine (but with the focus on the client machine), the problem appears.

Can this also be reproduced by remotely accessing the machine with VNC and then using the numeric keypad from the client machine?

[Trond-trondhuso (trond-trondhuso)]

I can reproduce this message when clicking caps lock on a computer with a backlit keyboard (Dell E4310).

[Yang (yaaang)]

I'm also seeing this problem. Removing the keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin file makes it go away, but it also means I can no longer use my Dvorak (default) keyboard layout, so I have to live with this bug.

It's mainly problematic for me not so much because of the CPU burning but because of its memory consumption, which causes much of my system to grind to a halt.

[Vittorio Gambaletta (VittGam) (vittgam)]

This is happening to me with an USB keyboard on an IBM ThinkPad X41. g-s-d goes to 100% CPU and the numlock led starts blinking in a crazy and irregular way.
The X41 BIOS has the option to keep the internal keyboard numlock separated from the external keyboard one selected; so only the led on the USB keyboard blinks. If I try to enable the internal numlock, it gets disabled as soon as the g-s-d disables the external one.
I don't know if this problem is related to the aforementioned BIOS setting; anyway I've now (temporarily?) solved this by removing the settings plugin for the keyboard as explained earlier in the comments.

[Коренберг Марк (socketpair)]

Workaround (!) was the disabling of 'remember numlock state' or whatever it was called.

[Коренберг Марк (socketpair)]

$ sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
$ dconf-editor
$ Go to org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard
$ uncheck "remember-numlock-state" checkbox

And you are done!

[Gitti (gittimail)]

I changed my pc.
With this new one, intel sandy bridge generation and Ubuntu 12.04.1 x64
installed, against the old one with core duo generation and ubuntu 12.04
x86:

after a VNC session the cpu consumption is high for vino-server process
(100%) but I don't see the num lock led blinking on the keyboard anymore.

Now I performed the dconf-editor configuration change and I will repeat the
test after next reboot.

2012/9/5 Коренберг Марк <email address hidden>

> $ sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
> $ dconf-editor
> $ Go to org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard
> $ uncheck "remember-numlock-state" checkbox
>
> And you are done!
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/969359
>
> Title:
> [keyboard]: gnome-settings-daemon consumes 100% cpu (and blinking
> numlock)
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/969359/+subscriptions
>

[DeadVirus (amfcosta13)]

Comment #107 fixes the problem here :)

[Mauricio Farell Perezgrovas (mfarell)]

I don't want to speak too soon but, Коренберг Марк... I think I Love You!!!

[Lealcy B. Junior (lealcy)]

I notice that after killing gnome-settings-, dconf-service is the responsible for high IO usage (using iotop), after killing dconf-service, the IO stop and the system becomes responsible again.

[Lealcy B. Junior (lealcy)]

I notice a pattern. When I'm running the following aplications:

Thunderbird 15, Firefox 15, gnome-terminal, Netbeans 7.1.2, gedit, Rhythmbox

on Unity 2D, and I try to open the following page on firefox:

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/03/15-practical-unix-grep-command-examples/

The issue triggers every time.

Sounds like a lot of udu, and I can't confirm It's reproducible on setups others than mine.

[Seth Yates (syates)]

I've had this issue repeatedly. Here are the apps I typically have open when this occurs: Firefox 14, Gnome Terminal, GEdit. This is running in VirtualBox. Looking at strace and .xsession-errors, I see that gnome-settings-daemon appears to be getting into some sort of infinite loop. Hopefully this will help somebody find and fix the root cause.

The .xsession-errors file simply has the following line over and over:

(gnome-settings-daemon:1450): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

The strace has the contents of the attached strace.txt file repeated infinitely.

[Tobias (tobias-redhat-bugs)]

FWIW: abrt choses my crashing g-s-d to be a dup of bug 716357.

[Brian Taber (btaber)]

I wanted to comment (again) this bug is still happening, I have been unable to catch when it starts, but will usually happen over night when the system is under very heavy load, CPU or GPU. The load levels I am talking about is a normally very responsive system will take 2-5 seconds (if not more) to open the unity menu/switching applications, etc, and the load level is high throughout the night. Of course still does not happen every time, but that is the most consistent condition I have observed when the problem happens.

[Anderson Luiz Alves (alacn1)]

i saw numlock turning on/off by it self many times,
one way i can always reproduce this bug is:
1. enable remote desktop sharing (vino)
2. connect to this computer remotely with vnc
3. remotely enable/disable numlock multiple times
4. remotely type some number with numpad keys
5. remotely enable/disable numlock multiple times
numlock starts turn on/off by it self...

[JRoque (mythbuntu-roque)]

Hi. Post #107 seems to have corrected it for me. All of my 8 ubuntu PCs were exhibiting this issue and all have stopped after disabling the numlock state. Two of those PCs were having the problem as I was fixing the setting and the "Numlock-State" field in dconf-editor was changing rapidly between On and Off states. That stopped after disabling remember-numlock-state.

[Tinti (viniciustinti)]

Hello. I had this issue too.

It was solved by running 'gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard remember-numlock-state false' as Коренберг Марк (socketpair) suggested.

Thanks.

[Brandon Lockaby (gbrandon)]

Updated from 10.04 tonight. After a few hours of use, noticed numlock turning off and on as if my keyboard was shorting. Confirmed gnome-settings-daemon consuming 150% cpu. I had been using Chrome, Calculator, and Image Viewer. Killing gnome-settings-daemon returned normal use of numlock, but it respawned and still consumes 150% cpu.

[Ridgeland (rambutan1)]

I'm fighting this bug too.
Tried the fix in #85 but bug came back again.
So I'm back here again.
Tried the fix of uncheck "remember-numlock-state"
cpu load dropped from > 5.0 to under 1.0 and system seems fine now.
Could be a hardware issue. The user has a replacement keyboard. Don't know what she did with her original Dell keyboard.

[RubenCCV (rubenccv)]

I had the same problem on an old laptop with Ubuntu 12.04.1 x86.

Thanks to Коренберг Марк, the problem was solved ! (#107)

$ sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
$ dconf-editor
$ Go to org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard
$ uncheck "remember-numlock-state" checkbox

[Ben Arunski (ubuntuxy-20-tall)]

Comment 107 worked for me. Bug occurs when using VNC client from Windows PC to Vino on Ubuntu 12.04.

[Mike M (hairy-palms-19)]

post 107/120 hasnt fixed it for me, it still occurs, usually starts when the system is doing something intensive.

[Roy (roi-jacobson1)]

happended to me when another user was logged in, and when switching to tty8 (the other user's session) the blinking stopped, so i switched over each tty and also in tty7 the blinking stopped. it crashed about 20 seconds afterward, though :/

[John Clark (clarkjc)]

I have reproduced this with Ubuntu 12.10 (with gnome-settings-daemon 3.4.2) as well. It displayed the usual symptom of 100% CPU usage, but then it crashed. I have attached an Apport crash report.

I can reproduce this at will by turning Num Lock on, connecting to vino-server with androidVNC, and typing in a gnome-terminal window.

[Richard Huddleston (rhuddusa)]

i can confirm comment #120 fix worked for me

from command line
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard remember-numlock-state false
and in case you had to
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard numlock-state 'off'

i added these commands to a custom new file in
/etc/X11/Xsession.d/

[Ruturaj Vartak (ruturaj)]

I too can confirm Comment #120 worked for me.

And I too had synergyc (client) running on Ubuntu12.10 (clean install)

[Vadim Peretokin (vperetokin)]

Ran into this again after using RDP on this machine and then toggling
numlock - settings daemon went wild with CPU.

[mauros (g-angeletos)]

The proposed workround in #120 did not work for me. This bug is really annoying - every time it happens it locks up the pc. I am running Ubuntu desktop 12.04.1 x64.

[Anoop Karollil (anoop-karollil)]

I upgraded to 12.10 and started seeing this again. Will re-do the keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin deletion and restart gnome-settings work-around that worked before.

[Mamoru (mamoru-redhat-bugs)]

Created attachment 635290
gdb backtrace when g-s-d consumes 100% cpu

I've encountered the similar issue. g-s-d now consumes 100% cpu. gdb log attached.

[Mamoru (mamoru-redhat-bugs)]

Looks like 100% reproducible when pressing NumLock key twice.

[mauros (g-angeletos)]

Upgraded to 12.10 with gnome-shell and the same problem appears. The issue occurs randomly without being able to understand what triggers it. The proposed fix in #120 didn' work for me.

[dac922 (dac922)]

I see this bug too. Workaroud #107 helps.

[Andrew Potter (talisein)]

I have a patch for this upstream. If #120 / #107 didn't work for you, try applying it when G-S-D isn't going crazy and your numlock isn't flashing. It should definitely prevent numlock-flashing problem from happening; if G-S-D is using 100% CPU and your numlock isn't flashing, it may be a different bug...

[Francisco (francisco-redhat-bugs)]

This has been fixed at g-s-d 3.6.2 upstream:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679151#c34

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-settings-daemon/commit/?id=15baf34186c6b5886b26e5a37698893be36f510b

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-settings-daemon/commit/?id=5e2ab43195b0522489e17c4daef5f4b391222eae

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

upstream think they fixed the issue with http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-settings-daemon/patch/?id=ff5b65349a9e377d17946ccb29b764f19c3bef7e

I've uploaded that fix to raring and backported to quantal, once the fix is confirmed we will backport to the LTS as well

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-settings-daemon - 3.4.2-0ubuntu16

---------------
gnome-settings-daemon (3.4.2-0ubuntu16) raring; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/git_no_numlock_eating_cpu_loop.patch:
    - backport upstream fix for "numlock keeps changing state and
      gnome-settings-daemon is eating 100% cpu while that's happening"
      (lp: #969359)
 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:09:01 +0100

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Hello James, or anyone else affected,

Accepted gnome-settings-daemon into precise-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please change the bug tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not, change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Anderson Luiz Alves (alacn1)]

3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6 worked on precise

[Louis Simard (louis-simard-deactivatedaccount)]

I was subscribed to the duplicate bug 1004166, which is about a different way to get Num Lock to blink. With the proposed package, that method to get the bug is also fixed.

[John Light (jklight)]

I have also had this problem for the last couple of months so I applied the proposed package as per comment #135 and so far all is working well.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Hello James, or anyone else affected,

Accepted gnome-settings-daemon into quantal-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/3.4.2-0ubuntu15 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please change the bug tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not, change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

[Ridgeland (rambutan1)]

I just installed the i386 ...06 deb on a friend's PC with the problem.
Before the install cpu load was like 6.x or 7.x now it's like 0.3
Hope the bug stays dead.
Thanks for the package.
Will post back only if the bug returns.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the update is available for a week in precise-proposed and seems to work fine, did anyone got the issue with it?

[Bruce Dudek (bd4465)]

I am still having this issue on 12.04 LTS

$ dpkg -l gnome-settings*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii gnome-settings 3.4.2-0ubuntu0 daemon handling the GNOME session settings

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Bruce: what version are you using? you can use "dpkg -l | grep gnome-settings-daemon" to avoid having the column truncated

[Bruce Dudek (bd4465)]

Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS

$ dpkg -l | grep gnome-settings-daemon
ii gnome-settings-daemon 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.5
daemon handling the GNOME session settings
$ uname -a
Linux bruce 3.2.0-34-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Thu Nov 15 10:48:16 UTC 2012
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ ps -fe | grep gnome-settings-
bdudek 2445 1927 0 12:20 ?
00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-fallback-mount-helper
bdudek 3919 1927 99 12:31 ?
09:05:48 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon
bdudek 5750 5661 0 21:36 pts/0 00:00:00 grep gnome-settings-

As you can see it is eating up a whole CPU.

On Mon, 2012-12-10 at 18:13 +0000, Sebastien Bacher wrote:

> @Bruce: what version are you using? you can use "dpkg -l | grep gnome-
> settings-daemon" to avoid having the column truncated
>

[Simon Déziel (sdeziel)]

@Bruce, see comment #135 on how to enable precise-proposed to install version 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6 (note the .6 at the end) that has the fix included:

gnome-settings-daemon (3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/git_no_numlock_eating_cpu_loop.patch:
    - backport upstream fix for "numlock keeps changing state and
      gnome-settings-daemon is eating 100% cpu while that's happening"
      (lp: #969359)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:09:01 +0100

[Bruce Dudek (bd4465)]

Simon,

That fixed it.

$ ps -fe | grep gnome-settings-daemon
bdudek 2088 2014 0 10:27 ?
00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon
bdudek 2404 2014 0 10:27 ?
00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-fallback-mount-helper
bdudek 3939 3881 0 10:36 pts/1 00:00:00 grep
gnome-settings-daemon

Bruce Dudek

On Tue, 2012-12-11 at 03:06 +0000, Simon Déziel wrote:

> @Bruce, see comment #135 on how to enable precise-proposed to install
> version 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6 (note the .6 at the end) that has the fix
> included:
>
> gnome-settings-daemon (3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6) precise-proposed; urgency=low
>
> * debian/patches/git_no_numlock_eating_cpu_loop.patch:
> - backport upstream fix for "numlock keeps changing state and
> gnome-settings-daemon is eating 100% cpu while that's happening"
> (lp: #969359)
>
> -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:09:01
> +0100
>

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-settings-daemon - 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6

---------------
gnome-settings-daemon (3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/git_no_numlock_eating_cpu_loop.patch:
    - backport upstream fix for "numlock keeps changing state and
      gnome-settings-daemon is eating 100% cpu while that's happening"
      (lp: #969359)
 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:09:01 +0100

[charleshb (charleshbaker)]

I'm still experiencing the problem of gnome-settings-daemon consuming 100% of CPU. I have the deb from quantal-proposed installed.

[chbaker@reacher:~]$ dpkg -l | grep gnome-settings (12-19 15:08)
ii gnome-settings-daemon 3.4.2-0ubuntu15 amd64 daemon handling the GNOME session settings
[chbaker@reacher:~]$ (12-19 15:11)

Next time it spins up to 100% I'll capture the output of top. What other debugging info is needed? I'm running quantal on my MacBookPro8,1 from early 2011.

[Ridgeland (rambutan1)]

Follow up observations patch applied on 11-30 (post #140)
This is for a remote PC I connect to via VNC over SSH. tightvnc. I don't see it often. Today was first time in 3 weeks. User has trouble getting photos from camera.
Initial cpu load around 30% - things look good.
PC uptime is 2 hours - from TOP number 3 in TIME is "gnome-settings-". Why so high?
Caps lock came on once while I was connected. We share a gedit screen for text back and forth.
Strange bug still though.
When connecting an SD card reader or pen-drive it takes 5 minutes for nautilus to see it.
From the CLI # ls /media shows if very fast, but as empty.
While waiting out the card reader the cpu load zooms up to 250% and stays there.
May not be related but I should mention it.

[Tobias (tobias-redhat-bugs)]

Still an issue with 3.4.2 with currently stable F17. So a backport would be appreciated.

[Erno Kuusela (erno-iki)]

Still happens on Precise.

[Johannes Rosina (johrosina)]

Erno, could you please verify you enabled proposed, as described on comment #135
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/969359/comments/135

And tell us which version of g-s-d you are using? Run "dpkg -l | grep gnome-settings-daemon"

[steve cohen (steve-si9yrl01qsu4bt4tonx56g)]

sorry have not read all the details re:numlock but i can reproduce it
using remmina i connect to a vnc client
i issue a control_r i press the num lock button
i exit remmina

the client desktop is now locked into the num lock is off no matter what the lights on the key board says
and no local repressing the button returns functionality.. the light on the key board does toggle
even rebooting the system doesn't seem to reset the condition

to turn it back on i vnc re-connected pressed the control_r and then the num lock
i exited
bingo it was back on..

hope this is helpful

[Clemens Lang (neverpanic)]

3.4.2-0ubuntu15 from quantal-proposed solves the problem for me.

[Erno Kuusela (erno-iki)]

@johrosina, I hadn't enabled proposed, thought "fix released" meant it was in the regular updates already. With
proposed I went from 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6 to 3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6.1, I'll see how it goes.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-settings-daemon - 3.4.2-0ubuntu15

---------------
gnome-settings-daemon (3.4.2-0ubuntu15) quantal-proposed; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/git_no_numlock_eating_cpu_loop.patch:
    - backport upstream fix for "numlock keeps changing state and
      gnome-settings-daemon is eating 100% cpu while that's happening"
      (lp: #969359)
 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:09:01 +0100

[nachokb (nachokb)]

still happening -- using Quantal, gsd 3.4.2-0ubuntu15

[D Bnonn Tennant (bnonn)]

This is still happening to me as well, using 3.4.2-0ubuntu15. In fact, I think 3.4.2-0ubuntu15 CAUSED the problem to recurr. I had experienced it in the past and solved using the numlock workaround via dconf-editor.

Today I ran an update, and immediately afterward the problem came back. I don't know for sure that the new version of g-s-d was installed with this update, but it seems like a suspicious coincidence -- in any case, I definitely do now have the new version installed.

Unfortunately, neither the numlock fix is working (since it was already applied), nor removing /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin.

[Paul Olaru (paulstelian97)]

To me it happened once, after other bugs:
1. Used extensively (GPARTED=100%), crashed gnome-shell (wasn't answering, I guess the kernel or something else killed it)
2. Attempted to log back in (had to do SYSRQ+K to logout), got forced in gnome-classic (however having my icon theme)
3. Rebooted, nothing else, and 100%. This made me kill it, but...
4. Lost icon themes and etc. I tried to restart it and succeded after many attempts.
And I guess it handles the keyboard too, since the LEDs weren't working as I configured them but rather had default behaviour...

[Erno Kuusela (erno-iki)]

Still happening on Precise for me as well. Should we file a new bug or revert this status back to confirmed or new?

[Fedora (fedora-redhat-bugs)]

This message is a reminder that Fedora 17 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 17. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora
'version' of '17'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version'
to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 17's end of life.

Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that
we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 17 is end of life. If you
would still like to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it
against a later version of Fedora, you are encouraged change the
'version' to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 17's end of life.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes
bugs or makes them obsolete.

[Fedora (fedora-redhat-bugs)]

Fedora 17 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-07-30. Fedora 17 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.

[Vladimir Scherbaev (zemik)]

I have this problem after update from 13.04 to 13.10 with last updates. What information may help to fix this issue?

[Vadim Peretokin (vperetokin)]

I think you should go re-open or report a new bug on the gnome bugzilla, because this issue is still happening.

[Daniel Barrett (dbarrett-m)]

I can confirm this error message occurs in Ubuntu 13.04 64-bit while running VMware Workstation 10, each time that the mouse pointer crosses onto, or off of, the VMware window.

(gnome-settings-daemon:5101): libappindicator-CRITICAL **: app_indicator_set_label: assertion `IS_APP_INDICATOR (self)' failed

However, my CPU does not spike to 100%, at least as far as I can tell.

[ArtKun (artkun)]

Still happening on Precise for me. I have a laptop and there's no numpad, but the process starts to use 100% of one core every time I plug the charger and it'svery annoying.

[ArtKun (artkun)]

Just noticed it only happens on newer kernels, everything is fine on 3.2.

[manolo (mac-man2005)]

Comment #107 did not work for me.

dpkg -l | grep gnome-settings-daemon
ii gnome-settings-daemon 3.6.4-0ubuntu8 amd64 daemon handling the GNOME session settings

Running Linux Mint 15 on Acer Aspire 5730z
Kernel 3.8.0-33-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 23 09:16:58 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Stefan Hengelein (ilendir+launchpad)]

the Bug seems to persist on saucy (13.10) but i don't have a blinking numlock.

furthermore, it seems like the goa-daemon comsumes 90-100% on a cpu for every user that is logged in, therefore locking a cpu per user that is logged in.

$ dpkg -l | grep gnome-settings-daemon
ii gnome-settings-daemon 3.8.5-0ubuntu11.2 amd64 daemon handling the GNOME session settings
$ uname -a
Linux faui49y 3.11.0-15-generic #25-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 30 17:22:01 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

afaik, this didn't happen on 13.04.

[Tim Ritberg (xpert-reactos)]

I am using Linux Mint 17 64 bit.

After login with VNC/Vino, numlock began flicker and mate-settings-daemon was using 100 % CPU/Core.

[Ted Chen (surfer26th-j)]

I am on 14.04 LTS and using Gnome. I encountered severe and frequent high CPU consumption caused by gnome-settings-daemon process. I then deleted /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/keyboard.gnome-settings-plugin. I also applied the num lock fix as explained in #107.

I noticed improved (less frequent) gnome-settings-daemon "hangs," but still experienced them enough to be a big irritant. I then started performing traces. and noticed many failures in trying to open /var/cache/fontconfig. I then googled what could be causing that. I then came across this page: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=612105

I then applied (as suggested on that page) restorecon -R '/var/cache/fontconfig'

That seems to have done the trick. Everything is quiet now. I will post again if I experience any further problems. Hope this helps someone else!

[Kirils Solovjovs (linux-kirils)]

** Please change the status of this bug to Confirmed

I can confirm that this is still happening in Utopic.

My story is same as Ritberg's.
After I connect via VNC to my vinagre daemon the io usage slowly (during approx 20 hours) climbs to 100% and the system proceeds to hang while excessively writing to disk. strace shows that dconf-service is writing /org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/keyboard/numlock-sate on and off all the time.

This might help to diagnose the bug:
Setting /org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/keyboard/remember-numlock-state to off immediately fixed this issue for me without any additional side effects. I recommend shipping default installations with this flag to off.
Please note that the device in question is Aspire V3-551G and the built-in keyboard does not have a num lock led.

[Marcel Miguel (marcel-miguel)]

Still hapenning in Ubuntu 15.10, gnome-settings-daemon 3.16.3-0ubuntu1.

The problem on my installation was that ~/.cache/dconf was owned by root. I changed it:
sudo chgrp myuser .cache/dconf
sudo chown myuser .cache/dconf

Then dconf-editor was able to change confguration.
No need to change /org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/keyboard/remember-numlock-state, works with both settings.

I'm not sure but ownership of ~/.cache/dconf directory changed after an update.

[elichai2 (elichai2)]

Same thing for me in WIly 15.10.
gnome-settings-daemon - 3.16.3-0ubuntu1

I have 12GB RAM and i7 4700MQ cpu and my laptop is stuck.

[Harsha (atria-harsha)]

Hello This issue occurs when i try to connect via google remote desktop, only option to overcome is to kill gnome-settings-demon,
the version i am using is 15.10, may be the fix is not merged with this version ?

[Sergio Soares (eng-sergiosoares)]

Thank you, Marcel Miguel, comment #170.

I had the same problem after upgrading to Ubuntu 15.10. Changing the ownership of .cache/dconf, as you suggested, did the trick.

[Andrew Jennings (patslap)]

And thank you from me, too, Marcel Miguel, comment #170.

chgrp and chown of .cache/dconf in each user's home directory worked me as well.

[Janne Kytömäki (janne-kytomaki)]

Noticed Ubuntu getting unbearably slow after upgrading from 15.10 to 16.04. Gnome-settings-daemon was on top of processes list with 30% CPU. The ownership of .cache/dconf was root, changed it with chown and the problem seems to have gone away. Thanks Marcel!

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

Bug exists on Ubuntu 12.04 with MATE - mate-settings-daemon and dconf-service eat CPU and NumLock blinking.

[fpuga (fran-puga)]

#170 works for me also. unity-settings-daemon was producing a lot of io disk activity when starting the system after upgrading to 16.04 and that fixes it.

[Quentin Dufour (superboum)]

Just to mention that I encountered the same problem on Ubuntu 16.04 with GNOME. I checked the permissions on ~/.cache/dconf and indeed, it was owned by root. I've updated it as described in #170. I hope it will fix the problem.

[Lewis Cowles (lewiscowles)]

I've just encountered this today with 18.04, all updates installed both gsd-color and gsd-keyboard and gsd-clipboard all maxing out CPU leading to 60 seconds of non-interactive machine (I know lots of people that would have simply power-cycled, but I wanted to know if it was a separate issue).

[Sergey S. Starodubtsev (ses-box)]

seems I have the same problem on Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS