PPC kernel 2.6.38-11 #47 causes udev to spawn excessive instances

[Jonathan Hudson]

On ppc with 2.6.38-11-powerpc #47, udev spawns c. 40 instances, applications such as
29404 root 20 0 16036 3936 3264 S 14.0 0.4 0:22.72 udisks-daemon
29392 jrh 20 0 12684 4912 3408 S 13.7 0.5 0:22.68 gvfs-gdu-volume
29920 jrh 20 0 29156 9660 6764 S 10.1 0.9 0:15.60 gdu-notificatio
  473 messageb 20 0 4904 2220 940 R 9.8 0.2 0:17.12 dbus-daemon
  295 root 18 -2 3536 1136 428 S 7.5 0.1 0:46.40 udevd

then conspire to hog almost all CPU, rendering the machine useless.

This did not happen with previous kernels. It also does not happen on ia32 and x86_64 with the same kernel version.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: udev 167-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-11.47-powerpc 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-11-powerpc ppc
Architecture: powerpc
CustomUdevRuleFiles: 10-blackberry.rules 71-csr-bt.rules.off
Date: Wed Jul 20 19:19:46 2011
Lsusb:
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:c00f Logitech, Inc. MouseMan Traveler/Mobile
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
ProcKernelCmdLine: root=/dev/hda4 ro video=radeonfb splash quiet
SourcePackage: udev
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-01-02 (199 days ago)

[Wojtek Kaniewski (wojtekka)]

Same here on iBook G4. UdevLog.txt says that kernel reports media change over and over again. If you insert an audio CD, udev still wastes CPU cycles on blk_id et al but at least udisks-daemon doesn't run all the time.

[Marcus Comstedt (marcus-mc)]

For reference, the problem appears to be fixed in Linux kernel 3.2.0, so installing the package linux-image-3.2.0-5-powerpc can be used as a workaround, even on natty.

[Wojtek Kaniewski (wojtekka)]

I upgraded Linux kernel to linux-image-3.0.0-15-powerpc from Oneiric (along with module-init-tools, procpc and yaboot) and the problem disappeared.