[gamin] greedy gam_server

[Julie <julie guneratne ntlworld com>]

Hi,

I have a process called 'gam_server' which is making a nuscience of itself 
(hogging CPU, reappearing after I kill it...). How do I stop this?

The great and wonderful interweb seems to be telling me this is something 
to do with Gamin, and i've possibly got it kicking around because I 
carelessly used nautilus earlier. Your site and the FAM one appear to 
confirm that its something that should only be running if I'm using gui 
file browsers.

So.

Q. What is a File Alteration Monitor and why might I want it running?
A. Something to do with gui file browsers, (why isn't the refresh button 
good enough?)

Q. If I'm not using a gui browser, is there any reason at all why I might 
want the gam_server process running?
A. I don't think so...

Q. What should I do about an over-excited gam_server process?
A. Killing it won't help, another one will just appear. Nice-ing it helps 
a bit.

And the one I'm really interested in:
Q. How do I disable gamin permanantly?


I'm using Fedora core 4, with KDE. Don't know what version of gamin I have 
- I don't know how to check. There does not appear to be a file 
called 'gamin' on my machine. I located gam_server in /usr/libexec, but it 
didn't do anything useful with --versin or --help. I've just updated 
though, so it should be recent if its something that yum will be picking 
up.

Apologies for display of ignorance; I don't like it when processes I 
don't understand use significant resources. Searching for 'gam_server' 
turned up lots of people basically asking the same question - what is this 
thing, why is it hogging my computer and how can I get rid of it. While 
there were answers there for other linux distros, they talk about an 
/etc/gamin/gaminrc file. I have no gamin/ directory in /etc and couldn't 
find any file called gaminrc.

Is this worthy of a FAQ?

Thanks,
Julie