Comment 12 for bug 36581

I also have this problem; shutting amaroK down solves it. According to the log files, amaroK is monitoring three paths:

/home/frosty (my home dir)
/etc/security
/etc/samba/smb.conf

The last two paths are monitored by nearly every KDE application, and they don't seem to create any problem. However, amaroK is the only program monitoring my ~, so it seems safe to assume that the problem lies here.

When monitoring the gamin debug output from amarok, it seems to report a change with .xsession_errors every time. This seems correct, as .xsession_errors is changed a lot, but it is changed by gam_server itself, filling it with the familiar messages:

invalid length 24902
 end from FAM server connection
 invalid length 24902
 invalid length 24902
 invalid length 24902
 invalid length 24902
 end from FAM server connection
 invalid length 24902
 invalid length 24902
 invalid length 24902
....

It seems that the solution can be found by stopping those messages from appearing, resulting in less frequent updates to .xsession_errors and thus, amusingly, in a lower CPU usage.

I hope this helps anybody in solving this bug.

Greetings.