Thank you for the work on that. That's normal that the CPU usage stops when gdb attach the process because it stops it. The backtrace looks like a problem, it lacks details to be useful though. Could you try to build a debug package for gconf2 as explained on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash?
-- gconfd-2 doesn't stop for previous user logged into GNOME https://launchpad.net/bugs/85521 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
