Changing the Folder Watch Limit (Linux)

SmartSVN’s file monitor watches the folders of your SVN repositories for file changes, and updates all affected views automatically so you don’t have to refresh them by hand. On Linux, the file monitor requires Java 7 or later, and the number of folders that can be watched simultaneously is limited by a system-wide variable.

This means if you open an SVN repository in SmartSVN, and this repository contains more subfolders than is allowed by the system-wide limit, the file monitor may stop working. If that happens, you’ll need to raise the watch limit. This can be done as follows: For example, to raise the watch limit to 100K watches, log in as root (described below) and insert the following line into the file /etc/sysctl.conf:

      fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 102400
    

For this change to take effect, either reboot the system or execute the command /sbin/sysctl -p.

Tip

To understand implications of increasing the limit, have a look at http://askubuntu.com/questions/154255.

In order to obtain root privileges, enter su, followed by the root password. On some systems, you may have to “unlock” the root account the first time. To do so, enter sudo su instead.