PackageKitD running for a very long time

[Guest]

<newbie question>
On my kubuntu in System Activity i see the process 'packagekitd' running for a very long time, left this process on for about 10 hours, was still running, what does this process do, coz it is blocking Muon package manager which gets stuck at 6% when reading package list

Any idea what is going on here and how i can fix it?
</newbie question>

[OneLine]

PackageKit/Apper

http://www.packagekit.org/pk-faq.html

PackageKit runs a process packagekitd that is a daemon that runs per-system. The daemon lets you schedule transactions using either the raw DBUS methods, or using libpackagekit. The transactions are very fine grained, so an application would have to manage the transaction process itself. This would mean handling the EULA and GPG callbacks in each application. This is less than ideal.

For this reason, a session helper is provided which makes all the complexity go away; it handles all the GPG key authentication and EULA agreements, and also works with authentication agent and user settings. Using the session service is also designed to be synchronous, which means you can send the DBUS call and just wait for the result, rather than managing callbacks to update custom GUIs.

The session helper is implemented in gpk-update-icon on GNOME, and is also availble when apper is installed on KDE.

Are you using the Apper or some other PackageKit based package manager ? The default clean installation shouldn't have the packagekit parts installed.

I would kill the packagekitd.

[Guest]

This was an upgrade installation from 11.04 if that helps explain why this is installed.

I did kill it, but it comes back everytime I try to launch Muon Package manager and the package manager gets stuck at 6%, also just checked Apper is installed on the System.

[ronw]

You probably want to go with either Apper/PackageKit or Muon, and remove the other.