akregator fails to open network connections when there are more than 1024 feeds

[Benjamin Kudria]

Binary package hint: akregator

When more than 1024 feeds are loaded into akregator, it fails to fetch updated items over the network. First, I received the error: "Error listening on socket: -1". strace output showed that that the socket call was failing because of "too many open files". Increasing the ulimit -n amount (number of open files) reveals this error: "QSocketNotifier: Socket descriptor too large for select()".

[Crazyned (crazyned)]

Version: 1.2.1 (using KDE 3.5.1, Gentoo)
Compiler: gcc version 3.3.5-20050130 (Gentoo 3.3.5.20050130-r1, ssp-3.3.5.20050130-1, pie-8.7.7.1)
OS: Linux (i686) release 2.6.14-gentoo-r5

Akregator 1.2.1 in KDE 3.5.1. I recently added hundreds of feeds to akregator. Now, I get a lot of this when akregator tries to fetch feeds:

==============================================
QSocketNotifier: Internal error
QSocketNotifier: Socket descriptor too large for select()
QSocketNotifier: Internal error
QSocketNotifier: Socket descriptor too large for select()
QSocketNotifier: Internal error
QSocketNotifier: Socket descriptor too large for select()
QSocketNotifier: Internal error
.........
==========================================

And the red error icon replaces all my feed icons. Whenever I try to access any article from a feed I already have, I get this:

==========================================
kio (KRun): ERROR: 0x848ecd8 ERROR 43 The process for the http://html.nbc4.com protocol died unexpectedly.
==========================================

For any feed on any host. I even tried changing some default "ulimit" settings to this, thinking it might help:

==========================================
ore file size (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited
file size (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals (-i) 4095
max locked memory (kbytes, -l) 1048576
max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files (-n) 32768
pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues (bytes, -q) 819200
stack size (kbytes, -s) 16384
cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes (-u) 8190
virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks (-x) unlimited
=========================================

And it didn't. Restarting doesn't change anything. I tried with and without using browser cache. Akregator is now useless. Deleting a lot of feeds will allow akregator to function properly again.

[Benjamin Kudria (bkudria)]

I'm seeing this error too. I had to likewise increase my ulimit to >1024, but then this issue kicks in. It seems having more than 1024 feeds in akregator (not unreasonable!) triggers this problem.

Filed on Kubuntu Launchpad bugtracker also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdepim/+bug/205888

[Marcus Asshauer (mcas)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can't fix it, because your description didn't include enough information. You may find it helpful to read "How to report bugs effectively" [WWW] http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We'd be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem.
Can you please give us your ubuntu version and the version of akregator you are using.

[Benjamin Kudria (bkudria)]

Certainly! I'm on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy, and Akregator version 1.2.7 on KDE 3.5.8 .

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

I'd like to paste a quick calculation I did on IRC just now:
[16:25:14] <apachelogger> hm
[16:25:40] <apachelogger> let's say there is one intersting news, per feed, per day
[16:26:00] <apachelogger> say one needs 5 minuts per news (including reading headers of the others and clicking around)
[16:26:25] <apachelogger> that makes 5120 minutes per day
[16:26:33] <apachelogger> that are ~86 hours
[16:26:50] <apachelogger> ~ 3.5 days
[16:27:10] <jjesse> so basically an endless loop or read feeds
[16:27:13] <apachelogger> that makes 1278 days per year
[16:28:03] <apachelogger> even if you only read half the stuff you still wouldn't have enough time

There is _no_ sensible reason to have 1024 news subscriptions -> Won't fix.

On a technical level the bug is valid though... I guess the akregator team could do such a change, please forward the report to http://bugs.kde.org if you really think this should be fixed.

[Benjamin Kudria (bkudria)]

I can't agree with your analysis, Harald, but I agree that this is properly an upstream bug. Indeed, someone has filed this before me:

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124053

I'm still seeing this issue with Akregator in KDE4, too...

-Ben Kudria

[Mark Purcell (msp)]

Looks like similar issues with Debian GNU/Linux
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=524634

[Uwe Hermann (uwe-hermann-uwe)]

Same issue for me, as I also subscribe to lots of feeds. Increasing ulimit helps a bit, but then this issue kicks in. I guess there's some place in the code where an arbitrary limitation hsa been introduced recently, older versions didn't have this problem.

[Phil Mocek (pmocek)]

I, too, have experienced this behavior in Akregator. I find Harald Sitter's comment to be inaccurate. Many of the feeds I follow correspond to comment threads for blog posts. I read them long ago and leave them in Akregator so that I'll be notified if conversation resumes. That's a very sensible reason to have more than 1024 feeds in Akregator.

[Yuriy Kozlov (yuriy-kozlov)]

Your bug seems to be a problem with the KDE program itself, and not with our KDE packages. But don't worry! This issue is being tracked by the KDE developers at: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124053. Once fixed in KDE, it will be included in Kubuntu once the KDE version the fix is in in reaches Kubuntu.

Thanks!

[Kdenis (kdenis)]

This bug has only been reported for versions before 4.14, which have been unsupported for at least two years now. Can anyone tell if this bug still present?

If noone confirms this bug for a Framework-based version of akregator (version 5.0 or later, as part of KDE Applications 15.08 or later), it gets closed in about three months.