Nautilus gives error "too many files open" when copying

[Gate]

Binary package hint: nautilus

When moving through many directories, playing mp3 files in them and copying those files, nautilus gives a "too many files open" error and freezes to the point where new nautilus windows cannot be opened and existing ones are unresponsive and it must be restarted.

  A forum thread exists about this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=592626

[Scratches (lazytech)]

Yes, I can confirm this bug happens to my wife and I also. Using 2 different computers running Gutsy and only sharing a router for internet access (we are sharing nothing else).

We are working with various folders on the desktop rearranging large amounts of files, specifically .mpg files between folders (yes we both have large music collections that need to be organized). None of these folders have more then a normal CDs worth of music in them, they are not littered with hundreds of files, although the ~/home/username/Music/ will have thousands with all the CD titles stored there.

Randomly we are both getting a nautilus hiccup. Any folders currently open on the desktop become unresponsive. When clicking on a file in one of these folders the music note icon turns to a document style icon and will not open. Trying to open a new folder results in a dialog pop up stating:

The folder contents could not be displayed.
Sorry, couldn't display all the contents of "folder name".

We have both turned off the option to sample music files in Nautilus and have since rebooted since changing this option. This unfortunately does not fix the problem either. The only way short of a hard boot or soft reset of gnome desktop, is to kill the nautilus process and let it automatically restart.

Hope this explanation helps.

Tom

[Dan (theuberhombre)]

I am also receiving this error when copying individual mp3 files from an ntfs partition to a flash drive. Even after closing Nautilus, the system becomes unresponsive. Restarting X will fix the problem temporarily, but after copying 10 or so files, the error returns, and Nautilus is unusable.

[Thomas Brunner (tb-aerials-deactivatedaccount)]

Same error here and also during copying mp3 files.
killall nautilus does the trick until the error comes again, but that's not too elegant since I loose all my open nautilus windows.

[Sidisama (sidisama)]

I have several times the same error when I tlaunch one mp3 since Nautilus.
Here are the last lines of .xsessions-errors (/home) just after the appearance of the bug:

[code](nautilus:7557): Eel-WARNING **: Error starting command 'gnome-app-install --mime-type='application/octet-stream' 'file:///media/Musiques/Mes%20Musiques/Divers/Rap%20FR/Oxmo%20Puccino%20feat%20Bouba%20-%20Black%20Mafia.mp3' '/media/Musiques/Mes Musiques... feat Bouba - Black Mafia.mp3'': La création du tube de communication avec le processus fils a échoué (Trop de fichiers ouverts)

(nautilus:7557): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to store changes into `/home/sidisama/.recently-used.xbel', but failed: La création du fichier « /home/sidisama/.recently-used.xbel.137R0T » a échoué : Trop de fichiers ouverts
Unable to create TCP socket
Unable to create TCP socket
Unable to create TCP socket
Unable to create TCP socket

** (nautilus:7557): WARNING **: Hit unhandled case 17 (Trop de fichiers ouverts) in fm_report_error_loading_directory

** (nautilus:7557): CRITICAL **: failed to load icon 'lpi-help': Impossible d'ouvrir le fichier « /usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/lpi-help.png » : Trop de fichiers ouverts

(nautilus:7557): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_icon_theme_load_icon: assertion `error == NULL || *error == NULL' failed

** (nautilus:7557): CRITICAL **: failed to load icon 'lpi-translate': Impossible d'ouvrir le fichier « /usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/lpi-help.png » : Trop de fichiers ouverts

(nautilus:7557): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_icon_theme_load_icon: assertion `error == NULL || *error == NULL' failed

** (nautilus:7557): CRITICAL **: failed to load icon 'lpi-bug': Impossible d'ouvrir le fichier « /usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/lpi-help.png » : Trop de fichiers ouverts
Failed to create unix socket
** Message: Failed to load /usr/share/icons/gnome/16x16/mimetypes/gnome-fs-regular.png into memory: L'ouverture du fichier « /usr/share/icons/gnome/16x16/mimetypes/gnome-fs-regular.png » a échoué : Trop de fichiers ouverts
Failed to create unix socket
Failed to create unix socket
Failed to create unix socket
Failed to create unix socket
Failed to create unix socket
Failed to create unix socket
Failed to create unix socket

** (nautilus:7557): WARNING **: Hit unhandled case 17 (Trop de fichiers ouverts) in fm_report_error_loading_directory
VLC media player 0.8.6c Janus[/code]

And I do CTRL ALT BackSpace to restart.
Excuse my English of small French ^^"

[Patrick Wijnings (dutchr-pw)]

This is related to bug #125739 (mpg123 and mpg321 won't play audio preview in Nautilus (Gutsy)). Nautilus opens a FIFO when you hover over an audio (.ogg / .mp3) file, but doesn't close it because esound isn't installed on gutsy anymore.

To work around this bug you can either disable audio previews or install pulseaudio-esound-compat (and mpg321, sox and vorbis-tools if you want nautilus to actually play sound).

You can continually monitor the number of FIFOs nautilus has opened with the following command:
while /bin/true; do clear; lsof -c nautilus|awk '{ print $5; }'|sort|uniq -c|grep FIFO; sleep 1; done

[Jari Kankaala (jari-kankaala)]

I often get the same message when copying media-files. Most of the times nautilus restarts and is usable for a while before crashing again. After this happens I cannot get the right click menus working and I have to unmount and copy through the terminal. This morning I also seemed to get some kind of memory leak. I had no nautilus window opened but the computer was unresponsive so I after a while managed to run 'top' and noticed nautilus grabbing 1923m of virtual memory and 632m of real memory. I would love to investigate this further but would need some pointers. Running Gutsy and 'nautilus --version' gives me 2.20.0.

[getaceres (getaceres)]

I've found this bug while copying some mp3 files from/to a SD card. I had to use KDE and Konqueror to complete the task.

[Jo (jo-r)]

Same problem while copying/playing/browsing music files on a network drive;
As Patrick said - my Nautilus FIFO count rises to 1022+ and nautilus gradually stops responding, icons don't display properly, and when opening folders I get the error "The folder contents could not be displayed".
Killing nautilus resets the FIFO count to 10, and then setting sound preview to "Never" in nautilus FIFO stays at 10 and everything works well.

[Ivan Lautaro Lemos (ivancete)]

Hi, I wanted to tell you that I do the same thing happens in Ubuntu 7.10. Never in 7.04 I had this problem. I have a good machine. Moreover, the newly installed hard drive empty, the framework of 640mb, and I do not understand because this happens, I begin to think that is an important bug ... I have read that it is a protection in a .conf file, at this blog: http://linexiando.blogspot.com/2007/08/amule-error.html

More times happen when using mp3, to copy, but sometimes if I tried to open a directory. Ubuntu

Said he had a limit of 1024 open files, and that is reached that limit, everything is working and not leave us open more folders to view its contents, even if you leave work to save or copy anything or create a txt, or open the browser. Therefore I think this is something serious. The system is unusable, the only solution is to reboot.

I hope suggestions, help, or any other similar cases explanation about this. Excuse my English, do not speak clearly, I speak Spanish. Greetings

[Gate (gatewarstrekme)]

This problem is worked around by opening a file browser window, going to edit->preferences->preview and turning sound preview to "never." I also reduced the settings on other previews and I have not encountered this problem since.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. That looks like bug #183411 which should be fixed in gutsy-proposed now, could you try using this version?

[Vivek (vivekram-788)]

Yeah,while trying to copy music from my ubuntu to fat32 partition the same occured for me..it also occured while I was using k3b..quite a headache..as I cannot kill nautilus while running important work..makes me sort of handicapped...I resort to command line though for important work.

[Gate (gatewarstrekme)]

Work around: open any file folder, use the edit menu then preferences option, then the preview tab and change "Preview Sound Files" to "Never"

    I have not had this recur since making that change.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported, but feel free to report any other bugs you find.