Questions[baloo](ubuntu)

As mentioned in this question and answer, baloo file extractor often randomly pops up in the background in KDE Plasma, and consumes a lot of CPU cycles.

The answer says that it is safe to disable baloo.

What does baloo do? Will it disable file search/extract features in dolphin if I disable baloo?

KDE baloo has recently caused rsyslog to start logging many errors.

Part of 'Syslog'

Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid

It caused my /var/log/syslog to grow exponentially, it filled the disk once already, I've since disabled rsyslog to stop this from destroying my SSD and making Ubuntu unusable but I don't know what Baloo is or how to stop and uninstall it. When i fist noticed this /var/log/syslog had grown to 66GB causing my disk to be FULL. I was able to delete it and log back in and disable rsyslog through recovery mode. Running rsyslog for one second caused it to go up to 75MB.

'Neofetch --off' result

OS: Ubuntu 19.10 x86_64 
Host: 81NC Lenovo IdeaPad S340-15API 
Kernel: 5.3.0-40-generic 
Uptime: 11 mins 
Packages: 3040 (dpkg), 38 (snap) 
Shell: bash 5.0.3 
Resolution: 1920x1080 
DE: GNOME 
WM: Mutter 
WM Theme: Adwaita 
Theme: Yaru-dark [GTK2/3] 
Icons: Yaru [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: gnome-terminal 
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx (8) @ 2.100GHz 
GPU: AMD ATI 04:00.0 Picasso 
Memory: 2756MiB / 5945MiB 

I don't want to uninstall the whole of KDE straight away but if that is the only way to get rid of this broken program then I happily will.

Other commands

harry@harry-S340:~$ whereis baloo
baloo:

harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove baloo
[sudo] password for harry: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'baloo' is not installed, so not removed
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 4 not to upgrade.

harry@harry-S340:~$ whereis baloo_file
baloo_file: /usr/bin/baloo_file

harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove baloo_file
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package baloo_file

harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo systemctl status baloo_file
Unit baloo_file.service could not be found.

Pressing tab to see all the commands that have baloo in them:

harry@harry-S340:~$ baloo
balooctl                           baloo_filemetadata_temp_extractor
baloo_file                         baloosearch
baloo_file_extractor               balooshow

these all don't have any manuals

harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloo
No manual entry for baloo
harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloo_file
No manual entry for baloo_file
harry@harry-S340:~$ man balooctl
No manual entry for balooctl
harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloosearch
No manual entry for baloosearch
harry@harry-S340:~$ man balooshow
No manual entry for balooshow
harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloo_filemetadata_temp_extractor
No manual entry for baloo_filemetadata_temp_extractor
harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloo_file_extractor
No manual entry for baloo_file_extractor

Desktop file mentioned in syslog

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=baloo_file
X-KDE-StartupNotify=false
X-KDE-autostart-condition=baloofilerc:Basic Settings:Indexing-Enabled:true
X-KDE-autostart-phase=0
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
OnlyShowIn=KDE;GNOME;Unity;XFCE
NoDisplay=true

Requests

Balooctl status

harry@harry-S340:~$ balooctl status
Baloo File Indexer is running
Indexer state: Indexing file content
Total files indexed: 109,311
Files waiting for content indexing: 3
Files failed to index: 4
Current size of index is 507.65 MiB

harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo balooctl disable
[sudo] password for harry: 
Disabling and stopping the File Indexer

this stopped rsyslog filling up /var/log/syslog.

Thanks, Harry

I have Ubuntu 18.04LTS.

I was used to locate as an indexed search tool. Combined with grep (and sometimes find) it is a swiss-army knife for file searching and inspecting.

I have yesterday noticed that something was eating up my little spare space available. Today I concluded ~/.local/share/baloo/index is the culprit.

The respective spaces taken are

/var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db    47M
~/.local/share/baloo/index    7,5G

Is such a large difference normal? What additional information does baloo carry, to use such a large space? Can baloo be configured in a way that it uses a space similar to mlocate.db (even at the expense of some indexed information)?

PS 1: I didn't know about baloo until today.

PS 2: I have apt-get installed dolphin a couple of days ago, and I guess baloo came along.

PS 3: I have used dolphin since ancient times as well, in other systems, and I never noticed anything strange. I wouldn't know if in those other cases baloo was also installed but it lead to no issues, or if it was not installed at all.

Today after upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04, I found baloo_file_extractor consuming too much RAM and causing my laptop to slow down. I can temporarily fix this by running balooctl disable. I did a little googling and found out that it related to KDE which is weird I am using GNOME.

So is it safe to disable it or remove it altogether? If not, is there a way to make it not consume too much RAM?

The baloo_file_extractor process in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS takes up a lot of memory. top reports 84.3% of my 15.6 GB, - and some 20% (more or less) of the CPU.

I do not even run KDE, - I am in a Gnome session.

I note that there has previously (in 2014) been a problem with baloo_file_extractor, see How to keep Baloo running but with lower ressource consumption? But I suppose that is fixed. I do not have any external media mounted.