Re: [gamin] gam_server is using a large amount of CPU and swap space.

[Barry Rountree <rountree cs uga edu>]

On Tuesday 03 October 2006 16:34, Dan wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I have found that someone disabled the gam_server by moving 
> /usr/libexec/gam_server to a different directory.  I'm a 
> little nervous disabling part of the system.  Will this a 
> safe thing to do?   

I posted a similar question about a week ago and haven't seen
a reply.  I am speaking from near-total ignorance, but here 
is what I found out after some googling, plus some standard 
Good Advice:

If you're talking about a production server, then I would say 
it's worth spending a few hours trying to track down what the
real problem is.  I had a situation with Kubuntu 6.06.1 where, 
if Konqueror was running, the .xsession-errors file got changed,
which caused the gam_server to kick in.  I'm not sure if the 
fault is entirely with Konqueror and gam was just trying to
keep up, or if something weirder was happening (gam was dumping
errors to .xsession-errors, which then caused a gam update,
which caused an error, etc.)

Anyway, closing Konqueror caused gam_server to settle down.
There appear to be a few other kde apps that cause this, but
since I don't use them I can't speak to that.

I also found the following hints for changing the 
/etc/gamin/gaminrc file:

     none /var/log/*
     fsset jfs notify

Note that all of my partitions are jfs.

I've not had the problem recur since I made that change, but I
also don't know for certain if I've broken anything.  Don't
appear to have, though....

If the computer in question is a workstation and you're the
only one using it, and you make backups, then I think you're
fine just running with it disabled.  I understand that the 
package is being removed from Kubuntu -- that may be the case
for fedora as well.

Hope that provides some guidance.

Barry