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I am a first time user of any Linux distribution. I have installed Ubuntu 18.04 a couple of days back on my Dell Inspiron N5010. Since the first boot, I am facing heating issues on my laptop. Some google search helped me identify the culprit.

There is a process "systemd-udevd" which has two running instances on my system with %CPU utilization of 98.x and 3x.x.

I referred to this link at askubuntu which discusses the same issue I am facing. There are 2 interim solutions I understood from there. It is somehow related to Bluetooth.

  1. Disable Bluetooth from the BIOS. How to do that in Ubuntu 18.04?
  2. Run the below commands.

sudo systemctl stop systemd-udevd systemd-udevd-kernel.socket systemd-udevd-control.socket

sudo systemctl start systemd-udevd systemd-udevd-kernel.socket systemd-udevd-control.socket

These set of commands do kill the target processes and that cools down my system, but it's too cumbersome because I had to repeat these commands every time after starting my PC.

Please help/guide me to rectify this.

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Fix for the issue

I disabled Bluetooth from BIOS, and on reboot, the systemd-udevd process is not running anymore.

I am going to list the steps I followed to complete this process (for Dell Inspiron N5010).

  1. On system boot, just when the Dell logo is displayed, press the F2 key repeatedly to open the BIOS setup.
  2. Navigate using your keyboard (in BIOS mode, the mouse won't work) to Wireless.
  3. Under Wireless, disable Bluetooth.
  4. Restart the system.
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Well, I can't help you with the BIOS stuff, that's a bit beyond me, but if you don't wanna deal with running those commands every time you boot the laptop, just add the command to your crontab using crontab -e:

@reboot systemctl restart systemd-udevd systemd-udevd-kernel.socket systemd-udevd-control.socket

Derived from https://askubuntu.com/questions/228304/how-do-i-run-a-script-at-start-up

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  • Unfortunately, the above workaround didn't actually work. After the modification to the crontab, I both restarted and did a (power off + power on), but found the "systemd-udevd" process to still running at a near 100% CPU usage. I even wrote the systemctl start and systemctl stop commands separately with the @reboot directive in the crontab, but even that failed.
    – flamingo_stark
    Commented Aug 10, 2019 at 5:16
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I'm sorry I cannot solve your problem entirely, but here are a few clues and ways to mitigate the problem.

  • First of all, I'm pretty sure Chris Fisher from Jupiter Broadcasting (VP of Community at LinuxAcademy) has/had the exact same issue with his X1 Extreme or something like that. He talked about it a lot in "Linux Unplugged" (that was maybe 8-10 months ago iirc). I seem to remember it was related to Thunderbolt over USB-C for him, because of the dock or external monitor. You could ask people at JB (they have an IRC etc), I'm sure someone remembers if there's a fix Chris found.

    I know there is a Thunderbolt "Assist Mode" in BIOS settings that apparently bricks some laptops when enabled, so be extremely careful when fiddling with settings. Research first, backup always.

  • Secondly, I'm not sure about your use case but running an LTS kernel on a laptop is usually not a good idea. You might think it's more stable but in fact, because things tend to change fast these days, it's more a hit-or-miss where multiple hardware issues can creep up. I've been cured, I only run recent kernels on my X1 Yoga 3rd (19.04 works well enough for me, have you tried it?)

    If you really need the LTS/kernel version, consider maybe a headless VM or container and SSH into that. With KVM+virtio drivers you shouldn't even feel the difference.

A few pointers to research the issue, maybe:

  • use turbostat if you want real hardware readings, everything else (read from /proc etc.) is "what the systems intends to set" (e.g. CPU core frequency), not what is actually happening. Turbostat (more) is low-level enough for that.

  • if you really must keep firing these two commands, maybe use a cron job? @reboot with some sleep n ; command to make sure it's up. Alternatively, a systemd timer unit if you prefer. (food for thought.) This should at least automate the fix.

I hope you solve it, but it might be related to your particular combination of kernel version/mods and hardware. I'd personally try other distros/kernels before going too deep down the rabbit hole. Unless you like compiling custom kernels, of course.

Do report how it goes!

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  • ΦDev LTS 18.04.3 has a 5.0 kernel wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes . New enough for ya?
    – K7AAY
    Commented Aug 9, 2019 at 23:02
  • Do you have an IRC number or a link where I can find more about what Chris Fisher did to resolve the issue? I did not understand your second point. I do not have any particular use case in mind. Just wanted to switch to Ubuntu after using Windows for many years. Chose LTS as it offers support, and I may need it more often being a first time Linux user. I tried modifications to cronjob, as pointed to by @Zach above, but that didn't worked.
    – flamingo_stark
    Commented Aug 10, 2019 at 5:34

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