Don't thumbnail network shares

[bwat47]

By default pantheon-files thumbnails network shares (such as samba shares). This isn't very good default behaviour, because they need to be thumbnailed again every time they are mounted, and it causes the thumbnailer serverice(tumblerd) to use a lot of memory. Most file managers disable thumbnailing on network shares by default.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: elementary OS 0.2
Package: pantheon-files 0.1-0~r976+pkg9~precise1 [origin: LP-PPA-elementary-os-daily]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-32.51-generic 3.2.30
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-32-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu13+elementary3~precise1
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: pantheon_files
Date: Mon Oct 15 16:22:19 2012
InstallationMedia: elementary OS 0.2 "Luna" - Build amd64 LIVE Binary 20121006-14:26
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: pantheon-files
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[bwat47 (bwat47)]

I've also noticed as a nasty side effect of this behavior, it makes it very hard to unmount network shares because tumblerd is constantly keeping the filesystem busy trying to thumbnail videos.

[Ezra Sharp (nicekiwi)]

does this mean remote drives will never be thumb-nailed? That can be extremely annoying :/ Especially now that there's no preferences any-more.

[bwat47 (bwat47)]

This has regressed in a recent pantheon-files updates. Its trying to thumbnail large video files on samba shares... Which causes tumbler to freeze up and makes it impossible to unmount the shares because tumblerd is always "busy".

This is on a reasonably fast wireless network too, a nice netgear wndr4300 wireless n router. tumbler simply cannot handing thumnailing video over a network, this really needs to stay off by default...

[bwat47 (bwat47)]

At the very least a dconf preference would be nice to toggle thumbnailing network shares on or off :) Thunar has an option for this in its preferences.

[Rokkhan (rokkhan)]

tumblerd raises the iowait till 70%

[Cameron Norman (cameronnemo)]

I think the correct way to solve this bug would be to limit the memory of tumbler with something like cgroups. We have seen tumbler get out of control in other situations too; I think just putting an externally enforced limit would be more robust and easier than wading through every corner case.

I will talk to Sergey about getting ulatencyd into Isis, which puts processes into cgroups to limit their RAM and IO usage.