zeitgeist-datahub is calling inotify_add_watch() on .kde RecentDocuments every 4 seconds and failing

[Colin Ian King]

zeitgeist-datahub is adding inotify_add_watch on /home/$USER/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments every ~4 seconds and failing with -ENOENT since it does not exist.

strace shows:

poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=7, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN}], 3, 3998) = 0 (Timeout)
read(3, 0x7fffcfb823d0, 16) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
inotify_add_watch(8, "/home/king/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments", IN_MODIFY|IN_ATTRIB|IN_CLOSE_WRITE|IN_MOVED_FROM|IN_MOVED_TO|IN_CREATE|IN_DELETE|IN_DELETE_SELF|IN_MOVE_SELF|IN_UNMOUNT|IN_ONLYDIR) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=7, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN}], 3, 3995) = 0 (Timeout)
read(3, 0x7fffcfb823d0, 16) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
inotify_add_watch(8, "/home/king/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments", IN_MODIFY|IN_ATTRIB|IN_CLOSE_WRITE|IN_MOVED_FROM|IN_MOVED_TO|IN_CREATE|IN_DELETE|IN_DELETE_SELF|IN_MOVE_SELF|IN_UNMOUNT|IN_ONLYDIR) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

So clearly we have a ~4000 millesecond poll that times out followed by a inotify_add_watch on a directory that does not exist. I don't have any ~/.kde path to add the watch on to. So this seems a little bit wasteful to do this every 4 seconds.

Not sure about this, but the poll times out but we still do a read on fd 3, which is clearly not in a read state because the poll timed out rather than indicating fd 3 is read to read, so perhaps this is a bug.

Anyhow, my points are:

1. Is the ~4000ms poll really required?
2. Is the read on fd 3 required considering we just poll'd on it and it does not indicated it is read to read
3. Why is a watch being added for a path that does not exist every 4 seconds?

Although these wakeups are infrequent, they still contribute to probably unnecessarily keeping the CPU from a deep C state and hence this wastes power.

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

OK, it's got worse in Trusty, now it's polling even more directories that don't exist:

inotify_add_watch(9, "/usr/local/share/applications", IN_MODIFY|IN_ATTRIB|IN_CLOSE_WRITE|IN_MOVED_FROM|IN_MOVED_TO|IN_CREATE|IN_DELETE|IN_DELETE_SELF|IN_MOVE_SELF|IN_UNMOUNT|IN_ONLYDIR) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
inotify_add_watch(9, "/usr/share/ubuntu/applications", IN_MODIFY|IN_ATTRIB|IN_CLOSE_WRITE|IN_MOVED_FROM|IN_MOVED_TO|IN_CREATE|IN_DELETE|IN_DELETE_SELF|IN_MOVE_SELF|IN_UNMOUNT|IN_ONLYDIR) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
inotify_add_watch(9, "/home/king/.kde/share/apps/RecentDocuments", IN_MODIFY|IN_ATTRIB|IN_CLOSE_WRITE|IN_MOVED_FROM|IN_MOVED_TO|IN_CREATE|IN_DELETE|IN_DELETE_SELF|IN_MOVE_SELF|IN_UNMOUNT|IN_ONLYDIR) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
poll([{fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=9, events=POLLIN}], 2, 3997) = 0 (Timeout)

Why does this have to be every 4 seconds? That's sucking power on an idle system.