tracker starts indexing when removable media is inserted, even when indexing is disabled

[Chris Coulson]

Binary package hint: tracker

I've already raised this at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=578159, but I'm also raising it here to keep it on the radar, as it has the potential to hurt a lot of users upgrading from Intrepid where tracker is still installed by default.

Tracker will begin indexing when removable media is inserted, despite being explicitly disabled in the preferences (and it is disabled by default in Ubuntu anyway). It doesn't just index the removable device, but all of the users watch directories (by default, the users entire home directory). When doing this, the tracker-applet doesn't appear like it normally should when indexing, and the usual notifications warning the user that indexing is beginning do not appear either. The performance hit of this for many users could be quite severe whilst the indexing is happening, and the user will be left wondering why this is so.

***TEST CASE FOR SRU***

* With the current version of Tracker (0.6.93-0ubuntu1):
1) Disable indexing in System -> Preferences -> Search and Indexing
2) Insert removable media (eg, USB drive)
3) After a minute or so, note that trackerd and tracker-processes are consuming some CPU cycles.
4) For further verification, monitor the output of "dbus-monitor --session". A short while after inserting the removable drive, you will see some org.freedesktop.Tracker.IndexStateChange signals on the bus

* With the updated version of Tracker (0.6.93-0ubuntu2):
1) Disable indexing in System -> Preferences -> Search and Indexing
2) Insert removable media (eg, USB drive)
3) Note that trackerd and tracker-processes use no significant CPU cycles.
4) Monitoring the session bus with "dbus-monitor --session" should show no org.freedesktop.Tracker.IndexStateChange signals on the bus.

[Vincenzo Ciancia (vincenzo-ml)]

I was going to report what likely is a a consequence of this bug: tracker indexes removable media even if you specifically instruct it NOT to do so in its configuration. Moreover, I tried to explicitly ignore the /media path. I had to stop using trackerd, because every time I connected my 320 gb external drive it started indexing.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

That's likely an unrelated issue. Please open a new bug report for that and attach your ~/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg.

Thanks

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Accepted into jaunty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Is someone able to verify the fix for this?

[Pelládi Gábor (pelladigabor)]

I have tested this on a Jaunty upgraded from Intrepid. With tracker 0.6.93-0ubuntu1, after inserting a pen drive, tracker always started, it showed up on dbus, and made me suffer from Bug #361560. With tracker 0.6.93-0ubuntu2, tracker did not show up, no dbus signals, no CPU load, no neverending series of popup windows.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Copied jaunty-proposed to karmic.

[Clint Byrum (clint-fewbar)]

This actually went into Jaunty updates but did not get marked as fix released. I think.

[Sylvain Bourdette (sylvain-bourdette)]

Same issue on ubuntu Lucid

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

I tried to add /media to my no-index list, hoping that would prevent tracker from indexing removable drives... is that not a valid method?