Many of the problems I encountered seem to be related to a single issue : the maximum number of watches inotify is able to handle.
I have found that the default maximum number of watches is way to low too handle every feature using inotify, a default Ubuntu uses a great number of watches out of the box and in Natty and Oneiric it starts to become a real problem.
Possible effects are :
- Ubuntu One not syncing correctly
- Nautilus not updating itself when a file is created or deleted.
- Audio players not updating music libraries
- tail -f or other programs using inotify show a cryptic message about no space being left on the device (while there's plenty of space)
I have found that simply doubling the maximum of watches *is not enough* for a normal use, and if I believe this comment : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/beagle/+bug/115801/comments/4 there is no problem to setting the number of watches to a high value. My current setting is 524288, which is 64 times the default value, It may be too high for a default value but I believe that 65536 or 131072 should be enough for almost everyone.
If Precise Pangolin wants to be predictable, this issues *has* to be addressed.
While searching the web for more information about this bug I found this :
https:/
- 30-inotify-
This means this problem has already been addressed but the fix was kept for tracker (it also show that my current max watches value is quite sane, even by 2008's standards)
Now, it seems that this file just when away (and nobody uses tracker anymore anyway) :
(15:38) strider@astoria:~ $ apt-file search inotify-limits.conf
(15:38) strider@astoria:~ $