How to exclude single folders from indexing by localsearch?

[GaVenga]

Sometimes Firefox complaines about some of its files in use of another process…
Maybe its localsearch??
Then: how to exclude the folder and contents of .mozilla from being indexed.

[Nachlese]

What is your actual issue? fellow assistant

[GaVenga]

Hello Co. Assistant
Problem:
I don’t want to get the error message from Firefox anymore,
and find out the cause. Mozilla’s tips didn’t help.
https://support.mozilla.org/de/kb/Das-Lesezeichen-und-Chronik-System-wird-nicht-funktionieren

My idea was just to ask “localsearch”
https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/localsearch/
politely to keep hands off the .mozilla directory…

[Phemisters]

@GaVenga

I don’t want to get the error message from Firefox anymore,
and find out the cause.

You don’t say if firefox indicates exactly which file is the problem, or how often the problem happens.

If firefox tells you which file is being used you may have some luck using fuser or lsof to see what processes have the file open. If the other use is very brief then it might not be possible to catch it. If it is always the same file you could try something like watch -n 0.1 fuser -f some-file-name to see if you can see another process access the file.

I don’t use GNOME, but this ArchWiki page suggests:

To exclude a directory from the indexing, create an empty .nomedia file.

so you could add a file with that name on .mozilla to see if it makes a difference.

[GaVenga]

Perplexity advised me:
mkdir -p ~/.config/tracker3/miners
nano ~/.config/tracker3/miners/files.cfg
contents:

[Indexer]
IgnoredDirectories=.mozilla;.mozilla/firefox

Let’s see… ==> works (after reboot or after re-starting localsearch-3.service)
(localsearch-3 is the successor of tracker)
This is an example of excluding any folder under gnome (48).
(BTW.: localsearch-3.service must be enabled…)