Gnome Software causes heavy prolonged disk on start-up

[Phill]

After booting and logging in, it takes a long time for the computer to settle down and become properly usable. Heaving hard-disc activity by gnome-software which lasts for over a minute. This is revealed by `iotop` as the only application with around 99% of the disk access.

This is a serious problem on single-disk machines as programs can't properly start until it's over.

The program appears to be present in Startup Applications with the command `/usr/bin/gnome-software --gapplication-service`, even for the guest user.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: gnome-software 3.20.1+git20160617.1.0440874.ubuntu-xenial-0ubuntu1~16.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-45.66-generic 4.4.21
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-45-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Fri Oct 28 21:49:59 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-06-03 (147 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160420.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-software
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[gUI (guillaume-betous)]

Hi !

Exact same issue on Ubuntu 16.10
On every start, I must wait about 1 minute before being able to open a single xterm.

iotop gives exact same result : gnome-software --gapplication-service is having heavy disk access. Once finished, the system gets back to normal reactivity.

Really annoying on harddrive laptop.

Is there a known workaround to stop this ?

Thanks !

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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