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knb
Asked: 2015-06-16 01:23:38 +0800 CST

recoll executable hogs CPU for days, index dir is 18GB, should I upgrade v1.17 -> 1.20?

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I have some problems with the desktop-search tool "recoll", which comes with ubuntu. (I have 15.04)

Actually, there are several subquestions, but maybe they are all related. I suspect all questions can be solved with an upgrade of the software and a rebuild of the document-index.

I have a recoll index that has grown to 18 Gigabyte file

du -sh  ~/.recoll/xapiandb
18G     /home/knb/.recoll/xapiandb

This directory contains several subdirs and files.

When the recollindex process runs, it runs for days at 100% CPU, it never stops until I kill it with kill -9 PID. Why is that so? How to diagnose which files/dirs it is working on, or thrashing on? Research on the internet gives inconclusive answers. Would rebuilding the index solve the 100%CPU problem?

Is it good practice to exclude this directory from my enterprise backup software (over which I have not much control)?

Should I delete the index from time to time in order to make it more effective? Or, after dropping, would it simpley build the same 18-GB index, or, worse, an incomplete index?

Should I upgrade recoll to the newest version?

Recoll version: Recoll 1.17.3 + Xapian 1.2.19 - default for 15.04.

Wily werewolf , 15.10 will contain Recoll 1.20 anyway.

(according to https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/recoll)

15.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It's not at all normal that recoll would hog the CPU during days, even with a sizeable index. You could check what it is doing by activating the log file, but I think that you should update the version first because 1.17 is ancient.

    There are up to date packages for recoll on the recoll backports PPA: https://launchpad.net/~recoll-backports/+archive/ubuntu/recoll-1.15-on

    Once you have upgraded, you should stop the old indexer, delete your index: rm -rf ~/.recoll/xapiandb and rebuild it with the new version.

    If the problem persists at this point, please use one of the recoll normal support channels, for example, open an issue on bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/medoc/recoll/issues?status=new&status=open

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  2. I am using recoll Recoll 1.24.3 + Xapian 1.4.12 I have 32Gb of RAM, an x360 AMD 5200U GPU with 8 processors and it does indeed hog my system. My solution is to run it with nice

    sudo apt install nice

    and start recoll (I use the gui, then start update index from the menu) with

    nice -n -10 recoll

    that brings it down from 100% to 12% of the cpu. more about nice here https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/priority-of-process-in-linux-nice-value/

    -n values

    -20 most priority process

    20 least priority process

    you can change the nice value of a running process with

    renice -15

    where pid is the process id.

    and alternative is to get the pid from the name

    renice -15 $(pidof recoll)

    renice needs sudo privileges though

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