/usr/lib/tracker-extract-3 process - CPU usage spikes

5.10.7-3-MANJARO; FXCE 4.16

Hello, I see the CPU usage is around 50% but every maybe 10-20 second it spike to 100% apparently per the htop, glances output by the processes
/usr/lib/tracker-extract-3

I am not aware what this process is or how much it is needed.

pacman -Qi tracker tracker-miners command output suggests the project URL Projects/Tracker - GNOME Wiki! and “Required By” column does not suggest it is other app dependency, right? The project URL says: Tracker is a filesystem indexer, metadata storage system and search tool."

tracker-extract - The meta-data extraction application used on each file

gsettings list-recursively | grep -i org.freedesktop.Tracker | sort | uniq lists some data about this “tracker” configuration

$ for i in $(find ~/ -name tracker);do du -h $i --max-depth=0;done
70M ./.local/share/tracker
664M ./.cache/tracker

I remember that i have several apps that i have installed to help with file search. (Fsearch, ANGRYsearch, Recoll), i think only Recoll index file contents which this tracker also is doing…?

I think that this temporarily stopped the tracker:

$ tracker daemon -t
Found 3 PIDs…
Terminated process 1405 — “tracker-miner-rss-3”
Terminated process 1497 — “tracker-miner-fs-3”
Terminated process 1712325 — “tracker-extract-3”
but next day on un-suspending PC, i see tracker processes are back

Questions: Why this tracker is there, why the above mentioned pacman command does not shown that the package depends on other app/package and if a good idea, how to disable/remove this tracker please? Thank you in advance for the feedback…

btw. similar topic with some suggested commands:

That’s the older package that’s being deprecated. Your topic is about tracker3. Check:

pacman -Qi tracker3 tracker3-miners

gtk3 depends on tracker3.

That topic is about the older tracker.

1 Like

result:

$ pacman -Qi tracker3 tracker3-miners|grep Required
Required By : gnome-usage gtk3 nautilus tracker3-miners
Required By : nautilus

tracker3-miners is the one required only by Nautilus which is possibly called “Files” in its About page.
i do not know how that happen that this tracker-extract-3 is eating the CPU, maybe i am not using the search DB that it is creating, i do not know if yes or no. I am not using Nautilus atm.
Any idea how to discover if the nautilus package is behind this tracker activity? I know i can try to remove this file manager, but then i do not know how to properly try to launch that tracker to see if it will launch or if i have to keep it in mind on next reboot so i see if it will start silently utilizing my resources again. My aim is to discover which app using this “tracker” database and how to stop the tracker activity for good.

indeed, though i assume it is not causing this “tracker” activity/database updating:

70M ./.local/share/tracker
664M ./.cache/tracker

Your profile says you’re using Xfce and the post is tagged as such. Are you now using GNOME or did you install Nautilus on Xfce? If so, why? Thunar works just fine.

No Gnome, XFCE. I have likely installed Nautilus because it was available likely in default extra repo and i wanted to choose best File manager. Thunar is not the best for me for numerous reasons (describing it there would be OT). I hope someone can answer things mentioned in my previous comment.

I prefer Nautilus too on my Xfce system. That tracker process is a background process to index files. You can disable it from autostarting. Just disable tracker-related processes in “Session and Startup”.

After disabling it, reboot your system. There won’t be any cpu spikes anymore and you’ll be able to continue to use Nautilus’ search function.

1 Like