KDE screw up: baloo-file indexer - how to shut it down

[tomcloyd]

Just updated my last box - my main one - to KB 14.04. As I'm adjusting various things, I notice that something is seriously devouring CPU cycles. It turns out to be something I've never heard of - "baloo-file". Here I learn that it's an improvement on Nepomuk. But I detest Nepomuk and have never used it. Recoll (it's in the packages) does the job of desktop file indexing far better, and I've been delighted with it since SnowHog suggested it to me a while back. (thank you thank you!)

Now I find that in System Settings there is no entry for Nepomuk. Can't shut the damned thing off. No entry for baloo either. We're having this monster forced on us? THIS is the much touted configurability of Kubuntu in action? Huh?

This comment on the Arch Linux bbs tells you how to shut this thing down: Go to System Settings -> Desktop Search, and make sure your home directory is in the exclusion list. Mine was, but somehow it wasn't turned on. Simply clicking "Apply" did the trick. I got back control of my computer...at least until the next upgrade.

What's very odd is that this problem did NOT occur on the other box I merely updated, nor on the two boxes on which I did a clean install of KB 14.04. On all of these 3, the Desktop search exclusion list is simply empty, and search is not running. I have no idea how to make sense of this.

[Shaika-Dzari]

I personnally used the trick from gentoo forum : symlink baloo to /bin/true :

sudo mv /usr/bin/baloo_file /usr/bin/baloo_file-orig
sudo ln -s /bin/true /usr/bin/baloo_file
sudo mv /usr/bin/baloo_file_cleaner /usr/bin/baloo_file_cleaner-orig
sudo ln -s /bin/true /usr/bin/baloo_file_cleaner
sudo mv /usr/bin/baloo_file_extractor /usr/bin/baloo_file_extractor-orig
sudo ln -s /bin/true /usr/bin/baloo_file_extractor

Maybe a little overkill but it get the job done

[tomcloyd]

Maybe a little overkill but it get the job done

You may have the right approach. After updating the System Settings > Desktop Indexer exclusion list as I described, I discovered a process with "baloo" in its name still running. I killed it.

As a test, after reading your post, I just now rebooted to see what would get automatically launched.

Now, the only live process with "baloo" in its name now is "akonadi_baloo_indexer", but it's asking nothing of the CPU.

I note that this "akonadi_baloo_indexer" program is not one to which you gave any attention. Watching my System Monitor, it does not appear to be a problem. I'll keep watching to see if it activates. However, if it does, I'm not sure if your "overkill" solution would deal with it. What do you think?

[kubicle]

You may have the right approach. After updating the System Settings > Desktop Indexer exclusion list as I described, I discovered a process with "baloo" in its name still running. I killed it.

As a test, after reading your post, I just now rebooted to see what would get automatically launched.

Now, the only live process with "baloo" in its name now is "akonadi_baloo_indexer", but it's asking nothing of the CPU.

I note that this "akonadi_baloo_indexer" program is not one to which you gave any attention. Watching my System Monitor, it does not appear to be a problem. I'll keep watching to see if it activates. However, if it does, I'm not sure if your "overkill" solution would deal with it. What do you think?

Akonadi baloo indexer is separate from the file indexer. The Akonadi Agent indexes your mail (it enables a few things in kmail such as email text searching and autocompletion of emails from addressbook, for example). IME, it behaves better than the file indexer, but if you really want to also disable the akonadi agent, you can do it with:
1. copy /usr/share/akonadi/agents/akonadibalooindexingagent.desktop as ~/.local/share/akonadi/agents/akonadibalooindexingagent.desktop
2. edit ~/.local/share/akonadi/agents/akonadibalooindexingagent.desktop and change:
X-Akonadi-Capabilities=Unique,Autostart --> X-Akonadi-Capabilities=Unique
3. remove the baloo indexing agent with "akonadiconsole" (you may need to install package "akonadiconsole")

[tomcloyd]

Very interesting. Yeah, I want it GONE. Recoll is perfectly manageable and does an excellent job without becoming intrusive.

Thanks for the additional info. Am making careful notes.

[claydoh]

to disable baloo, you just have to have your /home dir in the Do Not Search area.

[kubicle]

to disable baloo, you just have to have your /home dir in the Do Not Search area.

This only affects the baloo file indexer, not the baloo akonadi agent.

[tomcloyd]

to disable baloo, you just have to have your /home dir in the Do Not Search area.

My experience this evening confirms this. This change alone fixes the problem.

[josefko]

This is the second thread with the same theme, the first was here https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...ng-performance
After Greygeek's advice to start baloo again I removed home folder from the removed list and baloo now works without problems.

[tomcloyd]

This is the second thread with the same theme, the first was here https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...ng-performance
After Greygeek's advice to start baloo again I removed home folder from the removed list and baloo now works without problems.

But getting it to WORK is absolutely NOT what this thread is about! Did you read my first post? I didn't want or use Nepomuk and am even less happy with baloo. Stopping baloo is what this thread is about, and it appears (to me) that the problem is solved, as has already been detailed.

[josefko]

We all wanted to stop baloo at first, when we saw cpu burn but some of us found out after baloo calming down, that baloo is harmless and maybe can be even useful. So bring baloo back can be solution for somebody, maybe not for you.

[tomcloyd]

We all wanted to stop baloo at first, when we saw cpu burn but some of us found out after baloo calming down, that baloo is harmless and maybe can be even useful. So bring baloo back can be solution for somebody, maybe not for you.

Just to clarify, because you persist in your misunderstanding of this thread: the issue - MY issue, since I started the thread - was to shut baloo down. From my initial post:

I detest Nepomuk and have never used it. Recoll (it's in the packages) does the job of desktop file indexing far better, and I've been delighted with it...

I did an extensive trial of Nepomuk a while back, and aside from being harder to control than Recoll, it simply doesn't off the same kind of useful output. My opinion, sure, but that point of view was the launching point for this thread.

[Pajoe]

After a few days baloo settled down on my system but on my wife's laptop baloo kept going and going for days making it really difficult to do anything. I found a message that
~/.kde/share/config/baloofilerc has a line in it under [Basic Settings] Indexing-Enabled=true I changed that to Indexing-Enabled=false and the laptop was useable again, but lost a few search items.
It's nice when it works but hell when it hogs the system.

[tomcloyd]

After a few days baloo settled down on my system but on my wife's laptop baloo kept going and going for days making it really difficult to do anything. I found a message that
~/.kde/share/config/baloofilerc has a line in it under [Basic Settings] Indexing-Enabled=true I changed that to Indexing-Enabled=false and the laptop was useable again, but lost a few search items.
It's nice when it works but hell when it hogs the system.

And I would just ask why there isn't a clear "OFF" switch for this program in System Settings. You shouldn't have to start editing config. files to do that, IMO.

[aria]

I almost burnt my laptop when upgrading 12.04 to 14.04. Unplugged the AC adapter to temporary stop Baloo. Investigated the issue and found the only setting mentioned above (do not scan for content) and added my home directory to it. Later added the media directory too, to avoid baloo starting to scan CD/DVD, USB, and SD/SDHC. Thought things were fixed until I gscan2pdf a page: baloo went on again, maybe ocrizing the scanned image for content, because this temp file wasn't in my home directory (note: in gscan2pdf, ocr option was disabled). Concluded that this beast was putting my laptop at too much risk (reached 70+°C in 2min after starting to scan), and, as I couldn't disable it (very poor customization GUI, despite pretensions of being an improvement to Nepomuk), nor could I use my laptop only on battery, I ended up with reinstalling 12.04.

If installing 14.04 from new, you might not see what baloo does, because no document to scan. But if you upgrade to 14.04 and have 10+GB of documents, once baloo starts, if you don't unplug the AC adapter soon, you might lose your laptop.

Add to baloo, the new network manager, that disconnects computer from the router every 5 minutes, and you get an impression similar to mine about this OS (which in my opinion doesn't worth even a beta designation, so dysfunctional and risky for the machine is it). 12.04 was/is a beautiful dream, 14.04 a nightmare.