Software and Updater consumes 100% CPU in Ubuntu 16.04

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:

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

Solution 5:

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