I’m wondering whether I need baloo_file_extr or not. It seems to be running constantly. Thus I have a few questions…
How long should baloo_file_extr run in order to do a ‘complete’ index of content (files, but which files?)? It’s been running more than 18 hours now, which seems way too long to index 309GB of files on my solid state disk.
I don’t have a balooctl command installed as far as I can tell. Where is it found for those of you who do have it? Perhaps I just don’t have that directory in my PATH. I presume I should have the command as baloo_file_extr is installed and running. But I see nothing in /usr/libexec or /usr/libexec/kf6 where baloorunner, baloo_file, and baloo_file_extractor executables are located.
If I did have balooctl, I suppose I could stop baloo_file_extr by executing the command “balooctl disable” per this page:
That page also has a comment that says one can go to System Settings → Search → File Search → Disable to disable baloo. In my case the dialog has a "File Indexing: " control with a checkbox and label “Enabled” so I would just uncheck the check box.
But before I decide to disable it, I need to understand more about what it is. What files are being indexed by baloo_file_extr?
I think “File Search” does indexing that’s used by KRunner. But is this “File Search” performed using baloo_file_extr?
And what’s the difference between “File Search” and “Plasma Search” in regard to what source files are indexed?
So is it always running… and perhaps I never noticed until I had problems with Okular and went to look at my processes
It seems that right now the ‘nice’ value is set to 19 (fairly low priority) and it’s not indexing anything, just waiting for content according to the output:
$ balooctl6 status
Baloo File Indexer is running
Indexer state: Suspended
Total files indexed: 57,101
Files waiting for content indexing: 0
Files failed to index: 1
Current size of index is 2.70 GiB
$
I’m guessing now that it’s always running, waiting for newly created files to index?
By the way, I resolved the problem with Okular processes. LibreOffice Draw has a bug. It was creating corupted PDF files, which somehow were making Okular thrash and use excessive CPU time and making my computer’s fan go to top speed.
The previously exhibited symptoms of ballo_file_extr running with high CPU usage I think was related to a LibreOffice Draw bug. The bug resulted in a corrupted PDF file when exporting to PDF. When viewing such PDFs using Okular, the okular process was using excessive CPU time. After exiting Okular, the okular process never terminated. And after this scenario, baloo_file_extr was also using excessive CPU time.
After I figured out how to circumvent the LibeOffice Draw bug, I could create well-formed PDF files. And viewing them in Okular did not cause excessive CPU usage by either okular or baloo_file_extr.