Arch Linux

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

hi there,

while troubleshooting an XFCE computer, i came across a wiki article that advises to install FAM (or gamin) to monitor file alteration, and, for instance, allows XFCE to refresh its desktop when needed.

1) i'm a bit suprised because i though FAM was abandonned a long time ago, replaced by gamin.
then both seemed to be deprecated because of an inotify thingy embedded in the linux kernel.
a few years ago, fam was considered as a resource hog.

am i right ?

2) there's obviously something wrong with my XFCE setup because, it seems automounting doesn't work. I used to have cd and usb key automounting working fine (i assume this was thanks to hal and/or dbus, no fam nor autofs was installed at this time) : a new icon would appear on the desktop whenever a new removable medium is plugged/loaded. this no longer works.
i set up autofs. removable media are usually automounted, but they do not appear on desktop, i have to look for them in /media.

how comes ? i didn't do any relevant change in my setup, except tweaking my nvidia card, switching to static IP, and updating the system (nothing relevant).

- sorry if you consider this to be posted in the wrong section -

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pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

For some odd reason (because inotify is only available on linux) the xfce devs don't want to implement it into thunar. Thunar works with both fam and gamin, it is just that gamin provides only a subset of the features fam provides.

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

ok, so that means fam/gamin is actually only needed on XFCE, not GNOME or KDE which use inotify. right ?
or maybe fam/gamin provide some additional functionnalities over inotify ?

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what goes up must come down

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

fam provides the ability to monitor remote file systems, which both inotify and gamin cannot. If you don't need that than you should use inotify with both gnome and kde. Being kernel based it is clearly the best implementation.

Pierre

Developer

From: Bonn

Registered: 2004-07-05

Posts: 1,964

Website

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

For KDE: fam or gamin is not used here.

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robmaloy

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-05-14

Posts: 263

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

fam/gamin/whatever is not needed for auto-mounting stuff

have you installed the xfce4-goodies package which includes thunar-volman and configured thunar to use it (edit -> preferences -> advanced)?

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☃ Snowman ☃

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

i know it's not needed for automounting. but i thought it may me needed to refresh desktop icons (i may be wrong, of course).

i think xfce4-goodies is installed, but i haven't checked thunar configuration (i'm new to xfce, i personnally use kde).

as you may have notices robmaloy, my recent topics about XFCE are more about "it does not work, though it used to" : user shutdown, automounting... weirdo...

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what goes up must come down

robmaloy

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-05-14

Posts: 263

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

i know it's not needed for automounting. but i thought it may me needed to refresh desktop icons (i may be wrong, of course).

i think xfce4-goodies is installed, but i haven't checked thunar configuration (i'm new to xfce, i personnally use kde).

as you may have notices robmaloy, my recent topics about XFCE are more about "it does not work, though it used to" : user shutdown, automounting... weirdo...

yeah sure, but that are the type of things i always forget when installing xfce, so maybe you did too

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☃ Snowman ☃

Mashi

Member

Registered: 2007-02-19

Posts: 38

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

I had FAM installed and I kept having problems with some process getting caught in a loop and using all my CPU, so I uninstalled it and now I just hit F5 to refresh the desktop. This is the kind of shit that I am prepared to put up with as a linux user

jarryson

Member

Registered: 2007-02-18

Posts: 298

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

use gamin to instead is a better idea i gusee

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

yes, i have bad souvenirs too when it comes to fam, that's why i thought such piece of software was now obsolete. well, from what i read here it mostly is…

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what goes up must come down

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

ok, i installed gamin.
automount now works in xfce, the culprit was a corrupted hal.conf which prevented hal and dbus from being started.

thanks everyone for helping.

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what goes up must come down

Mashi

Member

Registered: 2007-02-19

Posts: 38

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

ok, i installed gamin.
automount now works in xfce, the culprit was a corrupted hal.conf which prevented hal and dbus from being started.

thanks everyone for helping.

As an aside I took to using the gnome auto mounter and disabling the xfce one because it mounts removable devices with write caching (so if you're not careful you can cause corruption).

jealma

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2008-01-03

Posts: 71

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

I have bad experiences with FAM too. Using KDEmod 3.5.x back in the days, I had uptimes of around 50 days on my workstation, no problem. But occasionally something would happen that made all my applications take 1 minute to start. After some research I traced it to FAM and restarting it solved the issue. But since it didn't matter whether FAM was running or not and it kept crashing, I decided to kick it out of rc.conf. Now I use gamin for the few applications that do want some FAM-like daemon.

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: is FAM - file alteration monitor - really needed ?

@Mashi
i didn't know this. There should be a option to disable this feature in thunar-volman. i posted a bug in xfce's bugzilla.

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what goes up must come down