FS#14623 - [fam] Excessive famd errors in /var/log/errors.log

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by David Leutzinger (leutzdave) - Thursday, 07 May 2009, 19:18 GMT
Last edited by Allan McRae (Allan) - Sunday, 14 June 2009, 11:50 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Allan McRae (Allan)
Architecture x86_64
Severity Critical
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description: Excessive famd errors in /var/log/errors.log

Additional info:
* package version(s)
Just did pacman -Syu
* config and/or log files etc.
/var/log/errors.log

Steps to reproduce:
Just did a pacman -Syu

[2009-05-07 13:28] starting full system upgrade
[2009-05-07 13:30] upgraded kernel-headers (2.6.27.6-2 -> 2.6.29.1-1)
[2009-05-07 13:30] Generating locales...
[2009-05-07 13:30] en_US.UTF-8... done
[2009-05-07 13:30] en_US.ISO-8859-1... done
[2009-05-07 13:30] Generation complete.
[2009-05-07 13:30] upgraded glibc (2.9-4 -> 2.9-7)
[2009-05-07 13:30] upgraded binutils (2.19.1-1 -> 2.19.1-2)
[2009-05-07 13:30] upgraded gcc-libs (4.3.3-1 -> 4.4.0-1)
[2009-05-07 13:30] installed ppl (0.10.2-2)
[2009-05-07 13:30] installed cloog-ppl (0.15.3-1)
[2009-05-07 13:30] upgraded gcc (4.3.3-1 -> 4.4.0-1)
[2009-05-07 13:31] * relogin or source /etc/profile.d/openoffice.sh
[2009-05-07 13:31] * see http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openoffice
[2009-05-07 13:31] how to use extensions, e.g. for spell checking
[2009-05-07 13:31] see /opt/openoffice/share/extension/install what
[2009-05-07 13:31] is shipped with this package
[2009-05-07 13:31] upgraded openoffice-base (3.0.1-1 -> 3.1.0-1)
[2009-05-07 13:31] upgraded psmisc (22.6-2 -> 22.6-2.1)
[2009-05-07 13:31] upgraded sysvinit (2.86-4 -> 2.86-5)

Reboot, logged into KDE4
Massive cpu usuage, top reveals python and syslog-ng as the culprits

Find literally thousands of the messages below:
May 7 13:51:55 dellazoid famd[2999]: fd 4 message length 1347375956 bytes exceeds max of 4136.

Decided to try logging into Gnome instead and the problem dissapears.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Allan McRae (Allan)
Sunday, 14 June 2009, 11:50 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Additional comments about closing:  2.7.0-12
Comment by David Leutzinger (leutzdave) - Thursday, 07 May 2009, 23:55 GMT
Apparently fixed by replacing famd with gamin
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Friday, 08 May 2009, 00:21 GMT
I have had this happen to me before and have never reproduced it again. Restarting fam solved the problem. Was yours reproducible?
Comment by David Leutzinger (leutzdave) - Friday, 08 May 2009, 03:36 GMT
It was reproducable, happened both times I logged into KDE after the update. Then I thought I'd try the famd replacement with gamim. No further problems.
Comment by Brayan Arraes (yack) - Friday, 08 May 2009, 17:04 GMT
Just restart fix the problem for me!!
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Saturday, 09 May 2009, 15:16 GMT
From all the searching I have done on this issue, it appears to only occur on Arch... Given upstream development is dead, I'm going to pull some of the Debian patches and see if this fixes the issue.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Thursday, 11 June 2009, 10:59 GMT
I think this would be the right time to switch to gamin:
- fam is dead upstream, gamin isn't
- fam needs a lot of patches to build, gamin builds out of the box
- fam uses (patched) dnotify, a shitty API that has been replaced by inotify, which is used by gamin
- fam uses a daemon, gamin works from the library linked to the application
- fam needs a daemon on the NFS server, gamin does polling (just like fam without dnotify support), this is actually a disadvantage of gamin, if the fam way would work correctly

I think debian based distributions are one of the few still using fam. SuSE and Redhat already switched to gamin a while ago. Looking at the advantages of gamin over fam, and looking at the bugs we encounter with fam, I think it's time to switch.
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Thursday, 11 June 2009, 11:50 GMT
I have come to the same conclusion and hence have not done anything about this in a month... I will bring up removal on the dev-public list.
Comment by David Leutzinger (leutzdave) - Sunday, 14 June 2009, 08:07 GMT
Not that it matters, but Ubuntu 9.04 with gnome uses gamin already.
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Sunday, 14 June 2009, 11:50 GMT
Using a patchset similar to Gentoo's in fam 2.7.0-12. Since they have not had this reported, hopefully this issue is fixed.

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