Kubuntu Breezy and the hungry gam_server

Thursday, February 23rd 2006

I started noticing some days ago that some applications seemed to slow the system down significantly. More specifically, every time I ran digikam, it felt like running through maple syrup.

A quick look at top revealed that a process called gam_serverwas merrily eating up 10%-20% of cpu capacity. Of course, I killed it straight away. But alas! Like a bird phoenix, it was up in no time, doing central processing like nothing happened.

So I turned to the internet. I read about [gamin], and I read about a possible solution to my woes. 10 minutes later, *gam_server is not giving me such a hard time* anymore. Here's what I did.

  1. Installed gamin from dapper, as per spilog's suggestions
  2. Installed a new ~/.gaminrc configuration file, from the gamin pages
  3. killall gam_server

What does my gaminrc look like?

# configuration for gamin
# http://www.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/config.html
#
# Can be used to override the default behaviour.
# notify filepath(s) : indicate to use kernel notification
# poll filepath(s)   : indicate to use polling instead
# fsset fsname method poll_limit : indicate what method of notification for the filesystem
#                                  kernel - use the kernel for notification
#                                  poll - use polling for notification
#                                  none - don't use any notification
#
#                                  the poll_limit is the number of seconds
#                                  that must pass before a resource is polled again.
#                                  It is optional, and if it is not present the previous
#                                  value will be used or the default.

# this is where I keep my pictures and my music, use kernel notification on these paths:
notify /mnt/felles/bilder* /mnt/felles/musikk*

More reading

picking on dnotify