The process of indexing all files requires a lot of I/O, and can have adverse effects on system responsiveness. Is there some sort of “nice” option for baloo that causes the process it to reduce the read rate? I understand, of course, that it would then take longer to complete.
I’m asking because of a high activity rate on my disk and a total loss of responsiveness. At this time I don’t know whether baloo is the culprit.
Mostly when baloo is using high CPU, the database is corrupted or it’s (re)indexing quickly changing folders. When I was hit by the latter ( and most likely the former due to that ) I stopped baloo, removed ~/.local/share/baloo, started baloo and let it build it’s initial database after I moved folder outside my homedir. Haven’t had any baloo issues ever since.
What I experienced was the system responding to cursor movement but not much else, with a lot of chatter from my disk drive. I don’t believe that both CPUs were busy, but I’ll double check. My first thought was that it was a lot of paging to/from the swap file, but someone suggested that it might be baloo. If it is baloo, I don’t want to disable the background indexing but I’d like to throttle it down if possible.
Run ‘top’ and check whether baloo is in the top of the output when you experience this. On a system we’d like to see output that confirms assumptions / suspicions, rather than rely on those 
.
Right now I’m at the stage of evaluating possible causes, and baloo wasn’t my first guess. But in case it turns out to be part of the problem I’d like to know how to throttle it back.
The CLI command “balooctl” may be what you’re looking for:
> balooctl
Usage: balooctl [options] command status enable disable start stop restart suspend resume check index clear config monitor indexSize
Options:
-f, --format <format> Output format <json|simple|multiline (default)>.
Only applies to "balooctl status <file>"
-v, --version Displays version information.
-h, --help Displays this help.
Arguments:
command The command to execute
status Print the status of the indexer
enable Enable the file indexer
disable Disable the file indexer
start Start the file indexer
stop Stop the file indexer
restart Restart the file indexer
suspend Suspend the file indexer
resume Resume the file indexer
check Check for any unindexed files and index them
index Index the specified files
clear Forget the specified files
config Modify the Baloo configuration
monitor Monitor the file indexer
indexSize Display the disk space used by index
>
> balooctl status
Baloo File Indexer is running
Indexer state: Idle
Indexed 22717 / 22717 files
Current size of index is 17.98 MiB
>
> balooctl monitor
Press ctrl+c to stop monitoring
File indexer is running
Idle
^C
>
> balooctl check
Started search for unindexed files
> balooctl status
Baloo File Indexer is running
Indexer state: Idle
Indexed 22718 / 22718 files
Current size of index is 17.98 MiB
>
> balooctl status
Baloo File Indexer is running
Indexer state: Idle
Indexed 22718 / 22718 files
Current size of index is 17.98 MiB
>
> balooctl config
The config command can be used to manipulate the Baloo Configuration
Usage: balooctl config <command>
Possible Commands:
add Add a value to config parameter
rm | remove Remove a value from a config parameter
list | ls | show Show the value of a config parameter
set Set the value of a config parameter
help Display this help menu
>
> balooctl config show
The following configuration options may be listed:
hidden Controls if Baloo indexes hidden files and folders
contentIndexing Controls if baloo indexes file content.
includeFolders The list of folders which Baloo indexes
excludeFolders The list of folders which Baloo will never index
excludeFilters The list of filters which are used to exclude files
excludeMimetypes The list of mimetypes which are used to exclude files
>
> balooctl config show contentIndexing
no
>
I had the problem on 15.1 and I’m currently running LEAP 15.2 beta, so I don’t know whether the problem will recur.
ARCAOS-40ADEE0:~ # balooctl status
Baloo File Indexer is running
Indexer state: Idle
Total files indexed: 16
Files waiting for content indexing: 0
Files failed to index: 0
Current size of index is 128.00 KiB
I’m also not currently seeing high CPU consumption. So right now it’s wait and see. Thanks.