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I just had the problem where gvfsd-smb-browse starts taking up the whole cpu and needs to be killed. Searching the Internet I see this is not uncommon, and there doesn't seem to be a general solution. As I do not use samba I would like to just remove gvfsd-smb-browse; but it is installed with the larger package gvfsd-backends that I probably do not want to remove. Is there a way to get rid of it?

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3 Answers 3

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I was having the same issue after upgrading to 16.04. What I did was change the permissions on gvfsd-smb-browse so that it can only be executed as sudo or by root. Now gvfsd-smb-browse doesn't run on startup. Below is how you can change the permissions.

sudo chmod 744 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-smb-browse

Not sure if it is a real solution to the underlying problem. But it does resolve the cpu usage issue by not running gvfsd-smb-browse on startup.

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  • That's an interesting solution. I considered simply deleting it as well. Does it serve a useful purpose that you wanted to keep it around for? Also, what happens when gvfsd-backends is upgraded -- do the permissions get reset?
    – Mike Shulman
    Apr 26, 2016 at 19:06
  • Well it is a virtual file system, and is pretty much used everywhere for mounting devices etc. So it won't be a good idea to remove it. This particular file "gvfsd-smb-browse" is used to browse windows file system, so if you are not mounting windows volumes on startup then there is no need to run it.
    – Kamran
    Apr 26, 2016 at 22:09
  • What happens when gvfsd-backends is upgraded -- do the permissions get reset?
    – Mike Shulman
    Apr 27, 2016 at 15:42
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Well, The upstream package didn't set up a configuration file or folder. I think these folders are more suitable to be somewhere in /etc

/usr/share/gvfs/mounts/
/usr/share/gvfs/remote-volume-monitors/

Or have at least an override there. Anyway let's make one.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/gvfs/enabled
sudo cp -ar /usr/share/gvfs/mounts /etc/gvfs/enabled
sudo cp -ar /usr/share/gvfs/remote-volume-monitors /etc/gvfs/enabled

echo 'export GVFS_MONITOR_DIR="/etc/gvfs/enabled/remote-volume-monitors/"' | sudo tee /etc/profile.d/gvfs.sh
echo 'export GVFS_MOUNTABLE_DIR="/etc/gvfs/enabled/mounts/"' | sudo tee -a /etc/profile.d/gvfs.sh
sudo chmod +x /etc/profile.d/gvfs.sh

Now, you have full control:

  • Disable: remove/rename back-ends & monitors definition files from /etc/gvfs/enabled/mounts/ & /etc/gvfs/enabled/remote-volume-monitors/ respectively.
  • Enable: copy back from origin or rename back (.mount & .monitor extension)

I have tested these instructions in Ubuntu 20.10, only with monitors for quick test (ps ax | grep -i gvfs).

Reference:

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There is a similar question where the workaround is to edit your smb.conf like in Launchpad bug #1409032. It worked for me reducing CPU usage and really sped things up!

I just put this line under the globals statement after backing up my /etc/samba/smb.conf file:

[global]
name resolve order = wins lmhosts bcast

Note: wins is no longer necessary on the majority of systems, especially those after the year 2000.

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