=============================================================================== Gamin will only provide realtime notification of changes for at most n files, where n is the minimum value between (kern.maxfiles * 0.7) and (kern.maxfilesperproc - 200). Beyond that limit, files will be polled. If you often open several large folders with Nautilus, you might want to increase the kern.maxfiles tunable (you do not need to set kern.maxfilesperproc, since it is computed at boot time from kern.maxfiles). For a typical desktop, add the following line to /boot/loader.conf, then reboot the system: kern.maxfiles="25000" The behavior of gamin can be controlled via the various gaminrc files. See http://www.gnome.org/~veillard/gamin/config.html on how to create these files. In particular, if you find gam_server is taking up too much CPU time polling for changes, something like the following may help in one of the gaminrc files: # reduce polling frequency to once per 10 seconds # for UFS file systems in order to lower CPU load fsset ufs poll 10 ===============================================================================