baloo takes up most of my CPU

[Guenther Palfinger]

Top reports about only 15 % (of 100%) idle and

%CPU of 400%
70 baloo_file_extr
15 baloo_file
10 each dolphin4, of which I have 8 running

~/.xsession-errors grew to 3.5 GB in about 15 hours

baloo_file_extractor used already 620 core CPU minutes.

Disabling baloo and killing the baloo_file_extractor process brought things back to normal: 85% of 100% idle system and not growing .xsession-errors, and dolphin4 instances do not use any CPU

I upgraded (from several releases before) to wily and use http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu wily main

$ dpkg -l ...
ii baloo-kf5 5.18.0-0ubuntu1~ubuntu15
ii baloo-utils 4:4.14.3-0ubuntu5
ii kdebase-runtime 4:15.08.2-0ubuntu1
ii kdelibs-bin 4:4.14.15-0ubuntu1~ubunt

[Flames_in_Paradise (ellisistfroh-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks for reporting this bug to help make Ubuntu better.

Please note: given information is insufficient without details what release and what version on KDE is in use.

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Marc Branchaud (marcnarc)]

I upgraded to 16.04 and the file indexing was causing my whole PC to suffer from temporary lockups. Even remote SSH logins wouldn't respond.

I have over 200GB of stuff in my home directory, and I've had problems with file indexing ever since KDE introduced it. I've had to manually disable it EVERY time I've upgraded.

Unfortunately, this time around I misdiagnosed the problem, and spent a week thinking I had a bad hard drive, then maybe wonky kernel/graphics drivers (I was getting "NMI watchdog: BUG" messages on the console). Huge waste of time.

Why can't the file-indexing get it right? Why can't the damn thing just STAY OFF across upgrades?

[Philippe Le Rohellec (philippe-lerohellec)]

It's happening on 16.10 with the following Baloo packages:

# dpkg -l | grep baloo
ii baloo-kf5 5.28.0-0ubuntu1~ubuntu16.10~ppa1 amd64 framework for searching and managing metadata
ii baloo-utils 4:4.14.3-0ubuntu5 amd64 framework for searching and managing metadata.
ii libbaloocore4 4:4.14.3-0ubuntu5 amd64 Core funcationality for Baloo
ii libbaloofiles4 4:4.14.3-0ubuntu5 amd64 Files funcationality for Baloo
ii libbalooxapian4 4:4.14.3-0ubuntu5 amd64 Xapian funcationality for Baloo
ii libkf5baloo5 5.28.0-0ubuntu1~ubuntu16.10~ppa1 amd64 framework for searching and managing metadata core lib.
ii libkf5balooengine5 5.28.0-0ubuntu1~ubuntu16.10~ppa1 amd64 framework for searching and managing metadata plugins
ii libkf5baloowidgets-bin 4:16.04.3-0ubuntu1 amd64 Wigets for use with Baloo - binaries
ii libkf5baloowidgets5:amd64 4:16.04.3-0ubuntu1 amd64 Wigets for use with Baloo

strace on the baloo_file_extractor process that's using 100% cpu shows an infinite string of "brk" calls:
brk(0x561794fb7000) = 0x561794fb7000
brk(0x561794ccb000) = 0x561794ccb000
brk(0x561794e41000) = 0x561794e41000
brk(0x561794fb7000) = 0x561794fb7000
brk(0x561794ccb000) = 0x561794ccb000
brk(0x561794e41000) = 0x561794e41000
brk(0x561794fb7000) = 0x561794fb7000
brk(0x561794ccb000) = 0x561794ccb000
brk(0x561794e41000) = 0x561794e41000
brk(0x561794fb7000) = 0x561794fb7000
brk(0x561794ccb000) = 0x561794ccb000
brk(0x561794e41000) = 0x561794e41000
brk(0x561794fb7000) = 0x561794fb7000
brk(0x561794ccb000) = 0x561794ccb000
brk(0x561794e41000) = 0x561794e41000
brk(0x561794fb7000) = 0x561794fb7000
brk(0x561794ccb000) = 0x561794ccb000
brk(0x561794e41000) = 0x561794e41000
brk(0x561794fb7000) = 0x561794fb7000

This is likely the cause of 2 complete lockups of my machines during the past 7 days.

[dusoft (dusoft-staznosti)]

Still a valid issue in the latest Kubuntu. 100% of CPU taken for hours.

Shut that shit down by editing:
~/.config/baloofilerc

and changing to:
Indexing-Enabled=false

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Philippe Coval (rzr)]

Also occured on fresh install of kubuntu 16.04.2.

So I am turning it off, and would suggest to disable it by default and eventually suggest user to turn it on to "optimize" his system.

[Simon Quigley (tsimonq2)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Kubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Kubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Kubuntu version. If you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:
apport-collect 1548051

and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Kubuntu PPA because there has been no activity for 60 days.]