This happened to me, too. I installed Multi-Core System Monitor for just a moment and noticed the steadily growing memory usage. Worse, removing the applet did not stop the leak. The leak didn't stop until the next system reboot (presumably restarting polkitd would have also worked, but I didn't try it since I wasn't sure how safe it was).
But since there's no way to know if this was the trigger for the original bug report or earlier commenters, perhaps the MCSM case should be opened as a separate, specific bug against policykit? -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to policykit-1 in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1470235 Title: PolicyKit high memory usage Status in policykit-1 package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Periodically I install updates on my computer and reboot without logging in. When I come back to my computer and log in, polkitd is using a large chunk of memory. At the moment it's using > 2.3 GiB of memory on a machine with 8 GB RAM: $ ps aux | grep polkit root 1229 0.4 29.8 2652532 2420916 ? Sl Jun19 67:38 /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkitd --no-debug Killing the process frees the memory until I reboot again. I'm currently using the latest version of policykit-1: $ apt-file search /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkitd policykit-1: /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkitd $ apt-cache policy policykit-1 policykit-1: Installed: 0.105-4ubuntu2.14.04.1 Candidate: 0.105-4ubuntu2.14.04.1 Version table: *** 0.105-4ubuntu2.14.04.1 0 500 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 0.105-4ubuntu2 0 500 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages $ sudo apt-get upgrade policykit-1 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Calculating upgrade... Done policykit-1 is already the newest version. Other information: $ lsb_release -rd Description: Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS Release: 14.04 ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04 Package: policykit-1 0.105-4ubuntu2.14.04.1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-41.55~14.04.1-generic 3.16.7-ckt11 Uname: Linux 3.16.0-41-generic x86_64 NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.11 Architecture: amd64 Date: Tue Jun 30 16:14:51 2015 InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-08-25 (309 days ago) InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140723) ProcEnviron: LANGUAGE=en_CA:en TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, no user) LANG=en_CA.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: policykit-1 UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/policykit-1/+bug/1470235/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp