Software and Updater consumes 100% CPU in Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I've upgraded my laptop (Lenovo Z50-70) which has an i7 CPU and 8Gigs of Ram to Ubuntu 16.04 from 15.10. I've been installing updates consistently. I'm using ubuntu with Gnome desktop environment (GDM).

Lately I've been experiencing a weird problem, my CPU (including all 4 cores) are 100% used by some processes like gnome-software(Gnome software) and fwupd(Firmware update daemon). This makes my work goes down. If i even kill those processes, they are starting back again.

Is there a solution for these processes to not utilize 100% of my CPU. And I don't want answers saying use the cpulimit utility to provision the amount of CPU for those processes. I find this a core problem in Ubuntu, i'm expecting real solutions for the problem.

What I've tried so far is, Removing those PPA's i've added except the official PPA's for checking updates. That didn't work out! Attached a screenshot of htop screen of these processes.

Solution 1

Had a similar issue.

As the other answer mentioned - it is possible to determine the problem by looking at /var/log/syslog.

Within my log gnome-settings was reporting the following:

(gnome-settings-daemon:3584): dconf-CRITICAL **: unable to create file '/home/USER/.cache/dconf/user': Permission denied.

In order to fix this I ran the following command, replace USER with your username:

sudo chown USER /home/USER/.cache/dconf

Solution 2

I had exactly the same issue, same processes taking 100% of CPU. What worked for me was to upgrade software in my Ubuntu (16.04):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

After that I rebooted my pc and now the issue is gone.

Solution 3

I managed to solve it by checking syslog (/var/log/syslog). It was logging like crazy that it couldn't create the file /home/<my user>/.cache/dconf/user. When I gave this folder the correct permissions, it stopped using this much CPU.

Solution 4

There can be a case when there's nothing in the syslog related to the service, in which case you may want to simply restart it. To avoid looking up services and killing them manually, you can just use systemctl:

sudo systemctl restart fwupd

Solution 5

Permission Problem for me.

looking at:

$ cat /var/log/syslog

(gnome-software:3812): dconf-CRITICAL **: unable to create file '/home/{user}/.cache/dconf/user': Permiso denegado. dconf will not work properly.

Executing this command, the problem solved.

$ sudo chown {user} /home/{user}/.cache/dconf

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Comments

[mikewhatever]

Should probably file a bug report.

[Nasik Shafeek]

@mikewhatever I'm hoping i could get some hints or tips from the askubuntu community, if not I'm going to file a bug report or probably try some alternatives.

[Delorean]

Have you checked for errors in dmesg or system logs in /var/log?

[Nasik Shafeek]

@Dorian (Nothing has been logged yet.) Says the dmesg file.

[Delorean]

dmesg is a command you type that will output a log.

[Nasik Shafeek]

Thanks for that tip, I did that and used grep with pipe to filter out any results for gnome-software or fwupd, nothing there. I explicitly tried /var/log/syslog as well.

[Delorean]

You should also check /var/log/apt/history.log as well as other log files in that directory such as /var/log/apt/term.log or /var/log/dpkg.log which are all places to look for clues and errors.

[Nasik Shafeek]

@ChadScherrer I've found that my hardware is highly not supported for Ubuntu, but it seems to work fine with Linux Mint based on benchmarks and my personal experience for around a month now. So I moved into Linux mint from Ubuntu. Try checking your hardware compatibility with Ubuntu. Cheers

[belacqua]

There is a bug posted which may be related: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fwupd/+bug/1591868

[Andrea Lazzarotto]

«the correct permissions» It would be a good idea to include which permissions you gave and the command you issued to assign them.

[Alexis Wilke]

That folder does not even exist on my machine.

[meawoppl]

This worked for me. I didn't have the /home/[user]/.cache folder issues listed above.