on my example above I ran without alignment so I did not have to worry about platesolve and all that. I did my test with lens cover on and no tracking in parked position and was able to get the problem so is not part of those subsystems (align, focus, track, guide we all "unchecked" in the scheduler, although available in load and running.
WARNING: Phonon::createPath: Cannot connect Phonon::MediaObject ( no objectName ) to Phonon::AudioOutput ( no objectName ).
That actually could be the culprit. Phonon failing to play notification sounds. One option is to go to Settings --> Configuration Notifications --> and then then off ALL sound notifications. Can you replicate the issue afterwards?
Indeed, this was the cause of the issue. By de-configuring all the sound alerts I was able to eliminate the problem.
The number of file handles in use by the kstars process has dropped significantly as a result. Previously I was seeing >100,000 file handles in use at the point where the issue occurred. Now I see a steady 331 file handles throughout the capture.
There's a problem with the sound playing function where no audio device is attached which is leaking file descriptors/objects => memory - suggest a ticket for this?
Results of a successful test are attached! I'm looking forward to not restarting kstars every morning now!
This is after a successful capture of >1000 images - prior to the test, the number was 331.
astroberry@astroberry:/universe/Pictures/AllSky/Zenith/Light $ lsof -p 17482 | wc -l
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() tracefs file system /sys/kernel/debug/tracing
Output information may be incomplete.
332
Many thanks and if you need any help recreating then I'm happy to provide it.
Iain
Turned off notifications for sound (KStars > Settings > click all "play" lines and turn off sound item).
Made it through the night. Picture below does not do it justice as the first target had 120 images and cut off ... I stopped it due to morning, not due to crash.
I agree with Iain as still some issue to resolve in the code to not create file issues, but this provides me a solution to get through the night without crashes so I will take the win. This has been frustrating me for several months so glad to clear this up and allows me to keep my R-pi/Kstars rig setup as the preferred setup.