upowerd hogging CPU while iPhone is connected

Question

It appears that upowerd is hogging my cpu time, I killed the process, but it has returned, and is climbing in resource consumption. Do I need upower? can I disable it?

I am using ubuntu Mate 16.04.

heres a screen-shot from the top command

Do you happen to have an iPhone plugged into your computer ? If so, you may need to select "Trust this computer" on the phone (or disconnect it), which may fix it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upower/+bug/861642 — Jonas Czech, Sep 02 '16 at 06:12
I have the same problem but I don't have an iPhone plugged in (I don't even have an iPhone!) or any other external device. Only a MicroSD card but upowerd hogs my CPU even with no MicroSD inserted so there must be some other explanation for it. — , Nov 02 '16 at 15:48
If the question has been answered please mark the answer so that others do not then see it as unanswered — LinuxSailorTech, Jan 12 '17 at 14:48
@JonasCz Wow, this has been a good day for finding amazingly perfect answers on the first attempt — Hubro, Sep 27 '17 at 16:31

score 47 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 11 '17 at 15:11

47

From @JonasCz, whose comment was:

Do you happen to have an iPhone plugged into your computer ? If so, you may need to select "Trust this computer" on the phone (or disconnect it), which may fix it: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upower/+bug/861642

Unplugging the Iphone solved the issue, or was an acceptable answer for me.

answered Jan 11 '17 at 15:11

j0h

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Thanks, this helped me too! I "trusted" the computer from my iPhone and that fixed it. – Aaron Apr 02 '17 at 13:28
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Wow, spot on - ripped out the cable: Gone. Psyhco. Didn't help to kill it either, it just came back. (But @JonasCz should have the credit!) – stolsvik Jul 20 '17 at 20:29
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Well that was easy. Crazy stuff... – Tetrinity Jan 17 '18 at 16:51
Why iPhone8 can not remember the `trust` option each time plugged to Ubuntu 16.04? – Honghe.Wu May 18 '18 at 05:42

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 13 '19 at 10:33

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This just happened when I resumed the computer this morning. Going into suspend last night I had Power Panel left open. This morning Power Panel was all greyed out and the hard disk light was flashing like a disco light show.

I used these commands:

$ ps -aux | grep upowerd | grep -v grep
root      2013  0.5  0.0 349976  7372 ?        Rsl  Aug11  11:12 /usr/lib/upower/upowerd

$ sudo killall -9 upowerd

Of course now upowerd isn't running at all but that's OK it'll come back with the next reboot. I don't use it much anyway just to check when wireless mouse or keyboard batteries are low.

answered Aug 13 '19 at 10:33

WinEunuuchs2Unix

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You can just `pgrep -a upowerd` to avoid the `grep -v` – Pablo Bianchi Oct 29 '21 at 01:28
@PabloBianchi Thanks for that! Almost as cool as when I learned about `pkill -f ` once instead of using `kill ` a whole bunch of times. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Oct 29 '21 at 01:49

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 26 '20 at 14:51

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I had a 3DConnexion device (3D Spacemouse) connected via USB and unplugging it solved my problem CPU hogging problem.

answered Mar 26 '20 at 14:51

Van

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upowerd hogging CPU while iPhone is connected

3 Answers3