baloo_file_extractor is slowing me down.

[Christian Dysthe]

On Thu Dec 21 2017 00:04:05 GMT-0500 (EST), Duncan wrote:

 > Christian Dysthe posted on Wed, 20 Dec 2017 16:33:40 +0000 as excerpted:
 > 
 > > Hi,
 > > 
 > > I am running KDE Neon user edition. Recently I have noticed that my
 > > laptop has been slow and sluggish. I have found baloo_file_extractor 
to
 > > be the culprit. After a while is consumes 4 GB or RAM and between 50 
and
 > > 100% of my CPU. As soon as I kill the process my laptop speeds up 
again.
 > > I'm not sure exactly when this started but it has been during the last
 > > couple of months. I have noticed I have a very large 
~/.xsession-errors
 > > file with a lot of baloo references in it. I find a lot of this:
 > > 
 > > org.kde.baloo: Found removable storage volume for Baloo undocking:
 > > "/org/kde/solid/udev/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/
 > usb1/1-10/1-10:1.0/0003:1FD2:6007.0008/input/input22/mouse2"
 > > 
 > > org.kde.baloo: Found removable storage volume for Baloo undocking:
 > > "/org/kde/solid/udev/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/
 > usb1/1-10/1-10:1.0/0003:1FD2:6007.0008/input/input22/event9"
 > > 
 > > org.kde.baloo: Found removable storage volume for Baloo undocking:
 > > "/org/kde/solid/udev/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/
 > usb1/1-10/1-10:1.0/0003:1FD2:6007.0008/input/input22"
 > > 
 > > 
 > > but not sure if that is relevant. How can I find out what is causing
 > > this and possibly get baloo to behave like it did in the past? I've 
been
 > > poking around in forums and found that baloo can be a problem at 
times,
 > > but not a way to troubleshoot it. Mostly it seems like people disable 
it
 > > which I do not want to do since I use file search a lot.
 > 
 > Welcome to the love/hate relationship of file indexing services. =:^(
 > 
 > FWIW, I not only disabled baloo at runtime, I'm on gentoo which makes it 

 > possible, so I build kde components without it where possible, and use 
 > alternatives where it (and akonadi) would be required -- no kdepim 
 > related stuff here.  For me, the benefits simply aren't worth the 
 > headaches, and I use other tools like mc's text search, grep, and the 
 > package-manager's tools, when I need to search.  (No locate service 
 > running here for similar reasons, but I'm on ssds so live-grep/search 
 > isn't /that/ slow.)
 > 
 > But your machine, your call, and you find it useful, so...
 > 
 > Because I have it build-time disabled I can't verify current behavior, 
 > but IIRC, check kde/plasma system settings, find the baloo control panel 

 > applet, and set the paths it indexes so it won't try to index removable 
 > storage.  Depending on how you use removable storage, indexing it may 
 > well create gigabytes of garbage index data that's of limited or no use 
 > anyway, and limiting indexing to only those parts of permanently 
 > accessible storage where it's useful, should let it index that while 
 > keeping the index relatively small and fast.  Further, because it's 
 > permanently accessible, full-indexing it should happen only once, and 
 > after that, it'll only have to keep up with changes, which should be 
must 
 > faster.
 > 
 > But the key is limiting what it indexes to stuff that's actually going 
to 
 > be useful to you.  The more stuff it indexes the bigger, slower, and 
less 
 > efficient it gets, but obviously, if you don't have it indexing much at 
 > all, there's a point at which you might as well not run it at all, so 
 > it's finding that balance that brings the magic.

Thanks! I looked at the Baloo control panel application. It lets me exclude 
directories, but I could not find any way to exclude USB and network 
connected drives. I have a lot of symlinks in my home directory pointing to 
a directory in another folder also in my home directory. I wonder how baloo 
treats symlinks? If you know how I can get Baloo to only index my home 
directory (and possibly ignore symlinks) it would be great. I have look at 
the baloo configuration file. Not too complicated, but again I have no idea 
how to disable USB and networked drives. Some of those are not mounted at 
all times and most of them through Dolphin. Again, if I could get baloo to 
only index my home directory and ignore everything else I assume I will be 
fine.

Finally, if I disable baloo can I still use Plasma Search (Alt-Space). Love 
that thing and use it for everything.
 > 
 > Tho as I said, for me, that balance is "kill it with fire!", for you 
it's 
 > obviously different, and that's fine.  You just have to /find/ it.
 > 
-- 
//Christian

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