Just happened to me as well. I have no idea why it started (how do I find out?), but I had reams of apport processes, all running at a nice of -5 (!).
The only way I had to get my system back was repeatedly issuing sudo killall apport (and since the processes kept re-starting) mv'ing the /usr/share/apport directory out of the way. De-installing the package now. -- Crash information collection depletes resources, clogs up and crashes system https://launchpad.net/bugs/71560 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
