tracker-store and tracker-miner-fs eating up my CPU on every startup

Scripting solution to disable it permanently on Ubuntu 16.04

As mention in the comments, files mention in this post no longer exist in 16.04. You can use the following script (source):

echo -e "\nHidden=true\n" | sudo tee --append /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-extract.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-apps.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-user-guides.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-store.desktop > /dev/null

gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files crawling-interval -2  # Default: -1
gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files enable-monitors false # Default: true

tracker reset --hard   

These are confirmed bugs on Launchpad: 911981, 925948, 1063255.

What does these processes do?

Tracker is a synergy of technologies that are designed to provide a highly sophisticated, innovative and integrated desktop.

Tracker provides the following:

• Indexer for desktop search (for more details see this spec : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IntegratedDesktopSearch)
• Tag database for doing keyword tagging of any object
• Extensible metadata database for apps like gedit and rhythmbox which need to add custom metadata to files
• Database for first class objects allows using tracker's database for storage and implementation of First Class Objects and the Gnome 3.0 Model.

How to get rid of processes?

1. Disabling tracker for globally (for all users)

   1. Edit /etc/xdg/autostart/trackerd.desktop file with root privileges (sudo -i gedit /etc/xdg/autostart/trackerd.desktop)
   2. Add Hidden=true to the end of the file
   3. Do the same for /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-applet.desktop if you want

2. Disabling tracker for your user only

   1. Enter the directory ~/.config/autostart, create it if it does not exist
   2. Create a file named trackerd.desktop

   3. Paste the following into the file, save and exit:

      [Desktop Entry]
      Encoding=UTF-8
      Name=Tracker
      Hidden=true
      

Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Tracker

Simply change this values using the gsettings witch will disable the constant indexing of Tracker:

gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files crawling-interval -2  
gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files enable-monitors false

The values could be changed using dconf-editor by navigating through org > freedesktop > Tracker > Miner > Files:

After this changes, it is highly recommended to cleanup the database to reclaim some lost space on the disk:

echo y | LANG=en tracker reset --hard

Maybe it's relevant for Ubuntu 14.04/GDM, and if it important to do not remove whole service then will be better to stop and/or renice.

Hence it can be:

Stop/reniced ( not recommended method ):

$ tracker-control -p  
Found 171 PIDs…  
Found process ID NNNN for 'tracker-store'  
Found process ID MMMM for 'tracker-miner-fs'  

$ initctl stop tracker-store && renice -n +19 -p NNNN && initctl start tracker-store

_{Notice people suggest yet tracker-control -r and maybe for systems with indexing enabled this will be better:}

$ tracker-control -e

OR the same with System Monitor GUI:

Applications > Utilities > System Monitor

• sort > Name
• scroll > tracker-store
• right click > Stop Process
• right click > Change Priority > Very Low
• right click > Continue Process

OR maybe the most appropriate way for systems with running tracker-store:

Applications > System Tools > Search & Indexing

An up to date version for Ubuntu 16.04:

echo -e "\nHidden=true\n"|sudo tee --append /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-extract.desktop
echo -e "\nHidden=true\n"|sudo tee --append /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-apps.desktop
echo -e "\nHidden=true\n"|sudo tee --append /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop
echo -e "\nHidden=true\n"|sudo tee --append /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-user-guides.desktop
echo -e "\nHidden=true\n"|sudo tee --append /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-store.desktop

gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files crawling-interval -2
gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files enable-monitors false

tracker reset --hard

Basically this is a remix of Radu's and Maxwell's answers, but locations and commands have been updated to Ubuntu 16.04 (there were multiple changes).

Enable advanced Startup Applications with this command:

sudo sed -i "s/NoDisplay=true/NoDisplay=false/g" /etc/xdg/autostart/*.desktop

Run Startup Applications and uncheck Tracker File System Miner and the other similar items. They can be re-enabled just as easily.

Using Synaptic, I selected "mark for complete removal" for "tracker", and for "zeitgeist" (kin to using the purge command which is supposed to remove associated components and config files for the program selected). Much more of the zeitgeist tracking software had been installed unknown to me, and so I chose complete removal for all except the zeitgeist shared libraries which looks to be way too embedded in the OS to remove safely. Almost like a dog with a bad case of heart worms, or better yet like a hydra. Chop one head off and there's three more trying to ruin your chi. Sounds pretty much like something microsoft enjoys doing to the people who trust them. Whatever... My laptop now boots in less than half the time, doesn't completely bogg down at random occasionally crashing what I'm using at the time, and it might just be the relief of getting rid of the thing but the rest of the software seems to be running much better without that hydra's heavy tentacles. Aww ferget it... You know what I mean.

Why is it that programs like these have to be brought in quietly through a back door? Perhaps it's because nobody wants that sort of thing on their personal laptop. If I was a tech running server edition on a mainframe that had massive gigs of ram and cores out the wahzoo, then it would be another story. Perhaps then I would like to utilize tracking software. Even then, I would still want it to be an application of my choosing.

Just saying.

I simply disabled it in Ubuntu Settings -> Search. In the top bar, there is a toggle for on/off of whole search. I set it to off and then ran:

tracker reset --hard

After this it looks like no tracker process is running anymore.

Answers above didn't help me. I've finally found a solution:

Running miner with high verbosity:

/usr/libexec/tracker-miner-fs -v 3

allowed me to pinpoint what's wrong - it was a directory with a very large number of files (around 1 million - proceduraly generated as a side effect of some project). Removing this mess fixed the issue.

One solution is to get rid of it altogether, and go old-skool find(1) if you want to search.

$ sudo apt remove tracker tracker-extract tracker-miner-fs

Personally, I removed it because I was getting this in my logs:

SQLite error: database disk image is malformed (errno: Resource temporarily unavailable)

Caveat Emptor: As a side-effect, I noticed that nautilus somehow got uninstalled with this. Not sure how.