$ uname -a
Linux ajsc855 3.13.0-46-generic #76-Ubuntu SMP Thu Feb 26 18:52:13 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS"
Toshiba Satellite C855, 4GB RAM, 720GB HD
I typically run Thunderbird, Firefox, a terminal or two, Gthumb, Gimp, Qcad, Gedit, Libreoffice, Inkscape, Document Viewer and occasionally Virtualbox.
I just noticed this a couple of weeks ago, so I am guessing a recent update started it.
It seems to me that there are quite a few duplicate copies of some processes populating memory after suspending/resuming a session for a few days. Namely, dbus-daemon, gvfsd and gconfd-2. The more I suspend/resume the session, the more of these processes appear. After a while they start using up a significant amount of memory and system response seems to slow down.
Logging out and back in did not alleviate the problem. Rebooting did. But, I will have to reboot again in a week to free up the memory used by these duplicate processes.
The example session used to get the following results was probably well over a week in use.
Before rebooting:
$ ps -ef >prereboot.txt
$ grep -i dbus-daemon <prereboot.txt|wc -l
40
$ grep -i gvfsd <prereboot.txt|wc -l
78
$ grep -i gconfd-2 <prereboot.txt|wc -l
37
After rebooting:
$ ps -ef >postreboot.txt
$ grep -i dbus-daemon <postreboot.txt|wc -l
4
$ grep -i gvfsd <postreboot.txt|wc -l
5
$ grep -i gconfd-2 <postreboot.txt|wc -l
1
I have just spent the last hour or so trying to track down an app that causes the extra processes, using system monitor and found none of the user programs I normally run are responsible. I did, however, close the lid on my laptop and waited for the system to suspend. When I woke it up by raising the lid, logged in and checked the system monitor, there were 3 new instances of dbus-daemon, gconfd-2, gvfsd and gvfsd-trash. I did this again and the same thing happened again. Now there are 7 instances of each.
Anyone got a clue?