Gnome Software eating all memory ram and turning the system unresponsive

Project Discussion
1

In the last 3 fedoras releases … happens the same terror movie.
Gnome Software begins running in background and devour all my memory ram. When i perceive … my fan is spinning fast, the mouse stops, the clock of gnome stops … and, maybe, after several minutes … the computer backs to the normal.

And i have 16GB of ram. The Gnome Software eats all! And try eat the swap too. Monster!

Unhappy Solution after many months: dnf remove gnome-software.

Observation: I don’t know if this is a factor, but i usually install some packages in Gnome Software and anothers in the dnf.

2

There’s definitely something odd going on here, but it’s hard to tell based on the limited information given. I take it you’re on standard Fedora Workstation?

A couple of things you might try:

  • Run pkcon refresh force.
  • Disable auto downloading of updates by Software: gsettings set org.gnome.software download-updates false.

That being said, could you look at the logs for Software (journalctl -b _EXE=/usr/bin/gnome-software off the top of my head, also untested) and see if anything interesting shows up?

3

I’ll reinstall the Gnome Software and try this :).

@refi64 the gsettings command i must do like a normal user or root too?
With normal user, i already have this flag off.
With root, the command complain about X11 because i don’t use GUI with root …

# journalctl -b _EXE=/usr/bin/gnome-software 
-- Logs begin at Sun 2018-10-21 14:32:31 -03, end at Mon 2018-12-17 23:06:18 -0>
-- No entries --

The command pkcon refresh force give me the error bellow.
I believe the problem was the repo phracek-PyCharm. I remove this repo and the command now works,

[root@dread-note ~]# pkcon refresh force
Recarregando cache            [=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Baixando informações do repositório[=========================]         
Carregando cache              [=========================]         
Finalizado                    [=========================]         
Erro fatal: Erro ao obter informação para o arquivo “/var/cache/PackageKit/29/metadata/phracek-PyCharm-29-x86_64/repodata/3581ad2eb58e9f0c8541976e4c972c3f62da241bd6a7b59b143353646c75f94e-appstream.xml.gz”: Arquivo ou diretório inexistente

Observation: Can i use gnome-software and dnf at the same time or maybe is better change dnf for pkcon?

5

AFAIK you should be able to, notwithstanding any bugs.

6

This happens to me too. In my case I blame having more than 40 repositories enabled :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

Good grief! Why would you have so many repos enabled? That’d make even dnf
hang!

8

Call my «power user» :wink:

Not really, just eat as much RAM as Chrome :smiley:

9

You talk about RAM… I had a problem with 100% CPU (as discussed in bug 1585276).

How many active repositories do you have?
How many disabled repositories but still present in /etc/yum.repos.d/? I found out that packagekitd was trying to retrieve the gpg key of a disabled copr repository and it was looking for a wrong URL (see comment 6 in bug 1585276).

10

I believe the problem is solved by removing a problematic repo.

More info here: Gnome Software eating all memory ram and turning the system unresponsive - #3 by felipehw