Today I ran into a problem with PT Magic (PTM) that the inotify limit was reached on Ubuntu. Inotify (inode notify) is a Linux kernel subsystem that acts to extend filesystems to notice changes to the filesystem, and report those changes to applications. Just as a future reference for myself and as a reference to others a very quick write up how to solve this.

You can get your current inotify file watch limit by executing:

$ cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches

You can set a temporary new limit with:

$ sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=16384

If you like to make your limit permanent use:

$ echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=16384 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
$ sudo sysctl -p

That’s it. The problem should be solved. At least this is the workaround. I have submitted an issue to TP Magic so that they can fix it properly. We will see.