# famd working intermittently

## VanDan

Hi all.

I'm running a number of Gentoo machines here at work, and I'm having issues with famd on all of them.

The most important is the server. We are using courier-imapd with fam support ( for instant notification of new email ). Everything works OK for a couple of days, and then famd stops working, and I get a HUGE string of errors such as:

```
Oct  8 15:33:41 [imapd-ssl] Failed to create cache file: maildirwatch (dan)

Oct  8 15:33:41 [imapd-ssl] Error: Input/output error

Oct  8 15:33:41 [imapd-ssl] Check for proper operation and configuration

Oct  8 15:33:41 [imapd-ssl] of the File Access Monitor daemon (famd).
```

I can fix this by:

```
/etc/init.d/famd zap

/etc/init.d/famd start
```

This isn't exactly a perfect solution, and I'm going on a 1-month holiday soon. I could set up a cron job to restart ( or stop, zap and start ) famd every couple of hours, but I really don't like the sound of it.

---

The other problem is that famd seems to be causing other problems on desktops. For example, I'll double-click on a file in nautilus, and I'll get a 'launching application' entry in the taskbar, and then nothing happens. 'ps ax' shows the offending application *has* started, but will not open completely. If I 'su' to root, and:

```
/etc/init.d/famd stop
```

and sit for a couple of seconds, the app will then open completely and I can continue.

Any takers for either problem?

----------

## VanDan

Bump!

Come on. Surely someone else is pissed at famd. It keep making nautilus hang on ALL PCs I set up. But it's just so handy to have...

Anyone?

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## omschaub

I am having very similar problems with famd.. if you figure anything out, please post it here.. thanks

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## cca

I also have the problem with the courier-imapd, I disabled famd support in courier for now until a solution is found. Note that the "fam" USE flag in on by default in the 2004.3 profile and has to be disabled in make.conf

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## meulie

bump!

Any news on this issue? It still occurs on my system...   :Confused: 

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## CarlUman

What is fam used for?  I'm setting up my server and have -* in my use flags and fam is not included so I'm not using fam support.  What things will this enable for me?

Thanks

Carl

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## kashani

fam allows faster notification of new emails because the fam daemon constantly watches for filesystem activity. However most imap users check their mail every minute anyway so it's a bit pointless.

I'd suggest dumping it as you really don't need it most of time. And I really don't like having portmap on my systems if I can help it. And I've generally had problems making fam run normally too.

kashani

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## CarlUman

Thanks much for the info  :Smile: 

No fam for me  :Wink: 

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## UberLord

Use gamin instead - no need for portmap to run then. Provided you have no need for the networking stuff that fam provides (and you're probably not, even on servers) then it should just work. As it's a pure library, there is no init script for it either.

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## f1n4rf1n

Same problem here..   :Mad: 

Despite of gamin being unstable I'll give it a try on our production system..

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## jollyrogr

famd seems to be really slowing my machine down as well.  I've had to restart famd twice today just so I could login to courier-imap.

I think its time to dump famd and re-emerge courier-imap sans fam.

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## f1n4rf1n

gamin works a little better but since my last post I had to kill a gamin-lib process twice which was running at 100% and doesn't allowed the user to log on..

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## Gabrys

Hey guys. I'm not using FAMD for email-notifying, but I have it loaded to default runlevel as some applications get use of it. I remember having such problems some big time ago with other distribution. Now I have Gentoo and the problem is the same. It uses 99% CPU after a few hours (more or less, it seems to be random). I have upgraded famd to the newest (testing) version in portage and the problem still remains! The only solution for me seems to be restarting famd, say every hour or disabling famd at all.

Any news about it?

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## revertex

3 years using linux and just only today i've discovered that i forgot to put famd to default runlevel.

Fam is installed,  but i never used famd before.

I guess was missed nothing not using fam as daemon in my desktop.

any good in use famd in desktop or is it only usefull for servers?

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## Gabrys

It is kinda' useful. Some application use FAM to get the info of when files are modified. But, there is GAMIN which does the same without making such piece of troubles that FAM does. Anyways, do you guys have idea of how to make FAM work corretly?

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## revertex

Thank's Gabrys.

Just now i figured that there's a bunch of konqueror and k3b features like mount partitions and refresh cds that only works with famd running.

i'm not running kde nor gnome, but fluxbox, maybe that's why i didn't missed it so hard.

Shame on me!  :Embarassed:  i guess i didn't RTFM twice.

----------

