gnome-terminal "gives too many open files" error after running for a long time, with frequent open/close of terminal window

[Jeff Zheng]

Binary package hint: gnome-terminal

After long usage of gnome-terminal without terminating the process, gnome-terminal gives "too many open files" error when open a new terminal.

Looking at the /proc/xxxx/fd, it seems that all opened /dev/pts/xxx and /dev/ptmx are left unclosed when an terminal window/tab is closed.

what I get from /proc/xxxx/fd is hundreds of opened fd

lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 80 -> /dev/ptmx
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 81 -> /dev/pts/29
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 82 -> /dev/ptmx
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 83 -> /dev/pts/30
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 84 -> /dev/ptmx
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 85 -> /dev/pts/31
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 86 -> /dev/ptmx
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 87 -> /dev/pts/32
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 88 -> /dev/ptmx
lrwx------ 1 jeff.zheng users 64 2010-10-19 23:55 89 -> /dev/pts/33

to reproduce, open gnome-terminal, open a new tabe by ctrl+shift+t, then close the newly opened tab, then look at the /proc/xxx/fd, you can see the newly opened fds are left unclosed.

After a long run with frequenct open/close of terminal, you'll "too many open files" error

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gnome-terminal 2.32.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.34-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Oct 19 23:56:01 2010
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-terminal
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-terminal

[Jeff Zheng (zhengzhe79)]

Here's the opened file list when it starts failing

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

according to upstream, that's a vte issue rather. reassigning.

[Jeff Zheng (zhengzhe79)]

Is ubuntu going to do something with this bug? It is affecting me, and I'm hesitating on upgrade the machines to 10.10 or future releases.

[ward (ward-pong)]

I assume the fix is in the latest natty packages. Can we please get a backport to maverick? This bug is extremely annoying.

[pmeerw (pmeerw)]

on maverick with all updates applied:

when opening a new terminal:
There was an error creating the child process for this terminal
Failed to create pipe for communicating with child process (Too many open files)

lsof | grep ptmx | wc -l
463

this is annoying, it kills my uptime :)

[ward (ward-pong)]

For the record, the fix is trivial; it's a one line patch. You can find it here:

   http://git.gnome.org/browse/vte/commit/?h=vte-0-26&id=c5ff71e924d7b3598e332392c4cc4c19e89a7d6f

I just ended up rebuilding my libvte9 package with the patch, and the problem is gone.