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Thread: How to disable baloo indexer

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Beans
    3

    Lightbulb How to disable baloo indexer

    After the update to 14.04 Kubuntu I did notice an executable running constantly using up to 95% of my CPU time that I had never noticed before. The executable was baloo_file. Not knowing anything about it, I found out on the internets that this is the new file indexer coming with KDE 4.13 which is replacing nepomuk. First thing I disabled in older KDE installations was nepomuk. I found it not useful, a resource hog slowing down my system to a crawl, and a generator of gigabytes of index files clogging my hard drive. As clever as indexing for better and faster searches might be, I never use it anyways, so I don't want it. In KDE releases < 4.13 you could turn Nepomuk simply off in the System Settings.

    Due to the KDE developers you cannot disable baloo at all. You can suspend it (happens on low battery for laptops...), but the suspend command I found failed on my system with an error:

    Code:
    qdbus org.kde.baloo.file /indexer suspend
    Them KDE devs recommend to add your $HOME directory to the list of directories not being indexed by baloo. I try that and added /home/ and my $HOME directory to the list of directories not getting indexed. Unfortunately it would not stop the darn thing. After only one day with KDE 4.13 I had accumulated 1.8 GB of index files in ~/.local/share/baloo.

    So here is what I did to get rid of it:

    1. removed all contents in ~/.local/share/baloo
    Code:
    rm -rf ~/.local/share/baloo
    2. made the directory unwritable for anyone:
    Code:
    chmod ugo-w ~/.local/share/baloo
    3. You can probably stop there, but might end up with crashed executables. So for good measure I created a little script in my $HOME/bin directory which I made executable and did add it to the list of scripts executed on KDE startup:

    #!/bin/bash
    killall -9 baloo_file_cleaner
    killall -9 baloo_file
    killall -9 baloo_file_extr
    rm -rf ~/.local/share/baloo/*

    So far no baloo services and no files in ~/.local/share/baloo.

    Cheers
    J

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Beans
    11

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    You're lucky. On my PC it generated 14GB of garbage before I found out how to kill this baloo thingy.

    p.s. Apparently there is less savage way to kill Baloo.

    Open $HOME/.kde4/share/config/baloofilerc and change the option 'Indexing-Enabled=true' to 'Indexing-Enabled=false'

    This should be enough.
    Last edited by rex86; April 18th, 2014 at 06:04 PM.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Beans
    2,336
    Distro
    Ubuntu

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    Per this (http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/deskto...configuration/) post by a Baloo developer, adding /home to the list of excluded directories will disable Baloo.

    Baloo only indexes a user's /home directory.

    Any full-text desktop search tool (e.g., Baloo, Recoll, Spotlight in OS X) depends on indexing all files in the target directories. It will do an initial indexing of those files that may have a temporary impact on performance and will, of course, generate data files whose size will depend on the amount and nature of the files that are indexed.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Beans
    1

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    Killing baloo, as juergen-helmers suggested, killed my whole KDE session.
    So I went with rex86's solution, rebooted and baloo is history.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Beans
    3

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    @rex86: Cool I will try that! Much easier...

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Beans
    3

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    Quote Originally Posted by buzzingrobot View Post
    Per this (http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/deskto...configuration/) post by a Baloo developer, adding /home to the list of excluded directories will disable Baloo.

    Baloo only indexes a user's /home directory.

    I tried adding the $HOME dir to the list of excluded directories. Didn't work...

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Beans
    2,336
    Distro
    Ubuntu

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    I'd guess a reboot or restarting Baloo is necessary before the new configuration is read. (Just to be sure, it would certainly want the absolute path to your home directory, e.g, /home/MyHome, not an environmental variable like $HOME.)

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Beans
    3

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    I too discovered my computer was lagging BADLY after updating my kubuntu, and top found me the program baloo_file too as a likely culprit. I found this thread, and it solved everything, thank you. My computer feels like it literally runs 100x faster in every way. KDE booted in about 10 seconds compared to like 2 or 3 minutes with baloo, and my browser is running incredibly fast.

    Also, the file you need to edit is
    $HOME/.kde/share/config/baloofilerc
    NOT
    $HOME/.kde4/share/config/baloofilerc. Also I did add my home dir to the systemsettings desktop search. Logged out of KDE, came back and it was gone.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Location
    Focsani, RO
    Beans
    21
    Distro
    Xubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    I encountered same problem.
    I found baloo_file_extractor hanging and restarting over and over (KGardianSistem) causing high processor usage.
    After ”google” a while, I found that the problem might be indexing large files (like video files, mkv etc.)
    So I configure Desktop Search not to search in my Video directory (also dev, media and mnt directory).
    baloo finished to index my files and processor usage went back to normal.

    Now I can use the Search tool, very handy to find files in a messy desktop.
    Kubuntu 14.04

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Dec 2013
    Beans
    17

    Re: How to disable baloo indexer

    I understand they are going to have a controller out for it soon but for now you might find this useful: https://github.com/wd5gnr/balooctl

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