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
NAMEman tracker-store
tracker-miner-fs - Used to crawl the file system to mine data.
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:
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