Re: KDE and the compose key

[Jaap Boender <jaapb%kerguelen.org@localhost>]

On Wednesday 12 September 2012 17:07:30 you wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 September 2012 14:44:22 Bernd Ernesti wrote:
> > It is necessary and I would be better to make it possible to dectivate
> > it with the options.mk framework.
> 
> I think an option to deactivate might be good, i.e., active by default (note
> that the option would be for qt4-libs).
> 
> > Even if you add a message this will not be clear to everyone if they
> > run out of file descriptors so I would like to not make it the default.
> 
> Is there a way to prevent the package (kdelibs4?) from installing if
> maxfiles is set too low? That way you cannot ignore the message. We also
> need a warning about the soft descriptor limit, which probably should not
> result in an install failure as it is a user limit.
> 
> > Using such a huge maxfile limit is gross.
> 
> My laptop is running a kernel with MAXFILES=16384 (lsof shows ~9300 open
> files). I don't see that number being intrinsically any more or less gross
> than 3404. It is simply what is needed to run KDE efficiently.

I've been running kde for a few hours now and it seems it's not really 
kern.maxfiles that is the problem, but mostly openfiles-cur from login.conf; 
fstat consistently shows some 2000 files opened by kded4 and just over 3000 
files open in total (with a compilation running on the side, so these are not 
just idle values). 

I'm currently using openfiles-cur=4096 and kern.maxfiles=8192, which works 
fine, but I think those values can be lowered; something like 2500 and 5000, 
maybe, to have a bit of a margin. But I'm not an expert on this...

As for the package, I'd think an option, activated by default, would be good; 
after all, it's not qt4-libs itself that is the problem, but qt4-libs as used 
by kdelibs4. We can then add a message to the kdelibs package4; I don't think 
refusing to install if kern.maxfiles is set too low is a good idea; not only 
does the needed value depend on system usage, also if you're doing a non-
interactive installation this will stop everything, even though it doesn't 
hinder installation, only running. With a message you just get notified and 
can correct things afterwards.

   Jaap
-- 
"Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies."