[Bug 281147] New: We should increase fs.inotify.max_user_watches to 65536 in /etc/sysctl.conf
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=281147 Summary: We should increase fs.inotify.max_user_watches to 65536 in /etc/sysctl.conf Product: openSUSE 10.3 Version: Alpha 4plus Platform: Other OS/Version: Other Status: NEW Severity: Normal Priority: P5 - None Component: Basesystem AssignedTo: bnc-team-screening@forge.provo.novell.com ReportedBy: joeshaw@novell.com QAContact: qa@suse.de A common problem for users with large home directories is that Beagle tends to use up all of the inotify watches as it monitors file changes for indexing. We should set fs.inotify.max_user_watches in /etc/sysctl.conf to a pretty high value like 65536 -- the default is 8192 -- to help alleviate this problem for many users. Kernel memory is allocated as the watches are taken, so for those who would not use additional watches, there is no adverse effect. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=281147 chrubis@novell.com changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- AssignedTo|bnc-team- |werner@novell.com |screening@forge.provo.novell| |.com | -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=281147 werner@novell.com changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |werner@novell.com Severity|Normal |Enhancement Status|NEW |NEEDINFO Info Provider| |joeshaw@novell.com ------- Comment #1 from werner@novell.com 2007-06-06 03:45 MST ------- IMHO this is a BUG in Beagle. Why Beagle does this? This slows down the system e.g. think about a multi users system and more then 100 co-workers on such a system. I do not like this kind of workarounds, please fix the application its self. The question is: why Beagle requires such a large amount of watch points for monitoring file system events? -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=281147 joeshaw@novell.com changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |jpr@novell.com ------- Comment #2 from joeshaw@novell.com 2007-06-06 09:37 MST ------- (In reply to comment #1)
IMHO this is a BUG in Beagle. Why Beagle does this?
It gets notification of file changes so that they can be indexed in real time. It's no different from file managers like Nautilus or Konqueror listening for changes on the directories its viewing.
This slows down the system e.g. think about a multi users system and more then 100 co-workers on such a system. I do not like this kind of workarounds, please fix the application its self.
You're conflating two different problems here. Simply setting up watches doesn't have any real effect on the system performance. It's how the application uses it. I'm happy to have a conversation on how to improve Beagle's performance and behavior, but it's a totally orthogonal discussion. In the specific case of Beagle, with all else being equal, it would make the system a lot *slower* if Beagle had to continuously recrawl the user's home directory to watch for changes. Without complete file notification, this is the only alternative. Inotify was written specifically for this use case. This problem will eventually come up for any application which needs to watch changes across a large number of directories, it's not a workaround and it's not Beagle-specific.
The question is: why Beagle requires such a large amount of watch points for monitoring file system events?
It requires one watch per directory. How many directories you have is entirely dependent upon how big your home directory is set up, and developers with huge source trees often hit this limit. You can roughly count the number of directories to be indexed with this command: find . -type d | grep -v "^\.\/\." | wc -l (You may also want to grep out CVS and any dot-directories like .svn) On my desktop machine, it's 47720 and that's a 104 gigabyte home directory. So it's a pretty reasonable upper limit, IMO. As to the 100-user use case you mention, in the unlikely case that there are that many users with huge home directories such that kernel memory does become scarce, then the system administrator can edit /etc/sysctl.conf and reduce it. That's why it's a sysctl and not a hardcoded value in the kernel. But using that use case to justify not doing it is weak because it's the vast minority of our users. It may make sense for SLES, and if we could only change it there (and not also in SLED) then perhaps we should. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=281147 werner@novell.com changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEEDINFO |RESOLVED Info Provider|joeshaw@novell.com | Resolution| |FIXED ------- Comment #3 from werner@novell.com 2007-06-06 10:27 MST ------- Added -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=281147 User hwadechandler-linux@yahoo.com added comment https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=281147#c4 Wade Chandler <hwadechandler-linux@yahoo.com> changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |hwadechandler-linux@yahoo.c | |om --- Comment #4 from Wade Chandler <hwadechandler-linux@yahoo.com> 2009-01-19 13:06:56 MST --- Maybe it could even be bigger. At least for desktop and not server installations. wade@wadelap1:~/local/projects/netbeans/sources/hg/release65_fixes> hg update -C *** the current per-user limit on the number of inotify watches is 65536 *** this limit is too low to watch every directory in this repository *** counting directories: found 23541 *** to raise the limit from 65536 to 131072 (run as root): *** echo 131072 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches could not start inotify server: cannot watch /home/wade/local/projects/netbeans/sources/hg/release65_fixes until inotify watch limit is raised -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.
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