224. Disabling tracker-miner-fs

Yes, yes, I shouldn't have a full desktop install on a computational node, but the nodes serve as instant replacement desktops if something goes awry with my main desktop, and occasionally visitors get to use them to access the internet in order to avoid getting bored.

Anyway, tracker-miner-fs is eating up 26% of my 8 Gb RAM on one of my nodes running KDE, and I really don't need it. I mean, I don't know if it's useful to most people running a full DE, but on my node I most certainly, definitely don't need it.

Given the number of posts online with questions about tracker ('What is it?", "Why is it using up all my resources?" etc.) I think that there's a bit of a PR problem. If it's a program that is noticeable because it makes demands on your computer system, the users should be allowed to know why putting up with this extra drain on resources is desirable -- or not.

Anyway.

aptitude show tracker says:
"Tracker is an advanced framework for first class objects with associated metadata and tags. It provides a one stop solution for all metadata, tags, shared object databases, search tools and indexing."

...which means what exactly in practical terms?

man tracker-miner-fs 

NAME
       tracker-miner-fs - Used to crawl the file system to mine data.

man tracker-store

NAME
       tracker-store - database indexer and query daemon

My guess would be that tracker-miner is basically indexing files for faster search, but I really don't know. It's one daemon I'm happy to expel.

There's a standard place for stuff that's supposed to be brought up with x:

ls /etc/xdg/autostart/

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   306 May  3 09:42 at-spi-dbus-bus.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6216 Jun 20 06:58 evolution-alarm-notify.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7404 Oct 14  2011 gdu-notification-daemon.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  5340 May 24 08:46 gnome-keyring-gpg.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6711 May 24 08:46 gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6282 May 24 08:46 gnome-keyring-secrets.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  5138 May 24 08:46 gnome-keyring-ssh.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  6681 May 30 21:02 gnome-sound-applet.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7018 Apr 28 09:27 gsettings-data-convert.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   460 Oct 21  2011 guake.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   301 Jun 24 16:52 hplip-systray.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   238 Dec  2  2011 kerneloops-applet.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4673 Mar 25 08:49 nm-applet.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   250 Sep 10  2011 notification-daemon.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  4651 Nov 12  2011 polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  7112 Dec 23  2011 print-applet.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3864 Oct  1  2011 pulseaudio.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   633 May 20 06:08 pulseaudio-kde.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3288 Aug 12 12:05 tracker-miner-fs.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3004 Aug 12 12:05 tracker-store.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11041 Apr  4 22:02 user-dirs-update-gtk.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   433 Nov  3  2011 wicd-tray.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   150 Feb  8  2012 xfce4-settings-helper-autostart.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   357 Aug  1  2011 xfce4-volumed.desktop

Incidentally, the folder on that particular node betrays a history of previously installed desktop environments...

To stop and remove the tracker-miner processes, do

tracker-control -r 

It removes the databases it has created as well.


To disable:
Launch tracker-preferences from the KDE menu. Uncheck all options under 'Semantics'. Uncheck all places under locations. Clicking apply doesn't seem to have any effect, but if you open tracker-preferences again you'll probably find that it worked.

To disable tracker-miner-fs and tracker-store from the terminal you can probably edit:

tracker-miner-fs.desktop:

51 Icon=

 52 Exec=/usr/lib/tracker/tracker-miner-fs

 53 Terminal=false

 54 Type=Application

 55 Categories=Utility;

 56 X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false

 57 X-KDE-autostart-enabled=false

 58 X-KDE-StartupNotify=false

 59 X-KDE-UniqueApplet=true

 60 NoDisplay=true

tracker-store.desktop

54 Icon=

 55 Exec=/usr/lib/tracker/tracker-store

 56 Terminal=false

 57 Type=Application

 58 Categories=Utility;

 59 X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false

 60 X-KDE-autostart-enabled=false

 61 X-KDE-StartupNotify=false

 62 X-KDE-UniqueApplet=true

 63 NoDisplay=true

 64 OnlyShowIn=GNOME;KDE;XFCE;

Reasons why we don't simply uninstall it:

apt-cache rdepends tracker

         tracker
Reverse Depends:
  tracker-miner-fs
  tracker-gui
  tracker-gui
  tracker-gui
  nautilus
  tracker-miner-evolution
  tracker-utils
  tracker-extract
  brasero
  shared-mime-info
  tracker-utils
  tracker-miner-fs
  tracker-miner-evolution
  tracker-gui
  tracker-gui
  tracker-gui
  tracker-extract
  tracker-explorer
  tracker-dbg
  shared-mime-info
  rygel-tracker
  nautilus (twice?)
  catfish