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After the last upgrade on:

 Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux buster/sid Kernel: Linux 4.18.0-2-686-pae Architecture: x86

/usr/lib/tracker/tracker-store eats a huge load of CPU.

 PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 7039 nath 20 0 96136 24460 11480 R 100,0 1,3 0:01.76 tracker-store

When I run tracker daemon I get:

Miners: 17 Nov 2018, 21:17:06: ? File System - Not running or is a disabled plugin 17 Nov 2018, 21:17:06: ? Applications - Not running or is a disabled plugin 17 Nov 2018, 21:17:06: ? Extractor - Not running or is a disabled plugin

I thought I disabled all tracker activities, what is it doing?

The fan is going like crazy and a reboot does not improve the situation.

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
60

after having tracker-store running with almost 100% CPU, almost all the time for 7 days now, it seems like I found an easy fix:

tracker reset --hard CAUTION: This process may irreversibly delete data. Although most content indexed by Tracker can be safely reindexed, it can?t be assured that this is the case for all data. Be aware that you may be incurring in a data loss situation, proceed at your own risk. Are you sure you want to proceed? [y|N]:

/usr/lib/tracker/tracker-store process is gone, fan is spinning down, and everything is quiet after a week. After a reboot tracker-store still stays quiet.

Update for Tracker3:

tracker3 reset -s -r

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  • 13
    Note to others coming here: sudo tracker reset --hard does not help; make sure to run this as yourself. (I know that's what the answer says but I ran it with sudo by habit.) Commented May 21, 2020 at 12:25
  • In Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS Desktop this gave me Found 0 PIDS and it did not affect the awful CPU cycles consumed up to that point by tracker-miner-fs-3. Instead, the work is switched to a process called tracker-extract-3 with the argument --socket-fd 3 in my case. After a few seconds, the same process comes back doing "lots of work" and heating up my laptop unnecessarily. Commented Dec 16, 2024 at 2:13
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tracker-store is part of tracker, a program that scans certain specified locations on your hard drive (and other places like your emails) and indexes the contents into a database. This allows you to do fast file contents searches. Whereas, tracker-miner-* are programs that scan data and tracker-store is the program that stores the metadata in a database for fast access later. Tracker uses a database for its own purposes, so it makes sense that it can use your CPU even when you are not dealing with process.

You could also configure tracker to index nothing (see program tracker-preferences), thereby probably stopping it from doing any work at all. Or you could try removing the package entirely, but, this will most likely break your system (more details - thanks to @broman). And also check this post How do I disable tracker in GNOME? (dead link).

Source: (Editor's note: Both links are dead as of 2025-03-28)

blogs.gnome.org/mr/2009/09/18/tracker-update-2
What is a tracker? - gnome

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    thanks for the link, I thought I disabled it completely, so it seems I only disabled the miners. What is not clear to me is that it has to be done at some point, but it runs almost 100% the whole time. I'm actually rather guessing it is some kind of bug. Commented Nov 18, 2018 at 19:12
  • @nath I thought that you should ask wether this is a bug or not? on debian users mailing list ( [email protected] ). list web-page : lists.debian.org/debian-user Commented Nov 18, 2018 at 19:37
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    @VipulKumar I think you should add that it will most likely break your system to uninstall, since nautilus (and possibly others) depends on tracker. See more here: soimort.org/notes/171103 Commented Nov 19, 2018 at 15:26
  • @Broman, Thanks for pointing out, I will change modify my post. Commented Dec 5, 2018 at 19:45
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System Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS Gnome 3.36.3

tried most of the easy solutions over the years from Ubuntu 18 on;

$ tracker daemon -t

every time after login and repeat a few times for good measure, this would shut tracker down for the session.

also

$ tracker reset -r

and disable search in gsettings

tracker would never give up

I stumbled upon /etc/systemd/user/default.target.wants and changed the tracker-extract.service and tracker-miner-fs.service names by adding .dis to the end of the filename and did a reboot too see what happened ; nothing... as in no tracker running

$ tracker daemon -t 0 PID's found

I have not experienced any adverse effect so far (2.5 days + multiple reboots). My requirements are modest so is my linux knowledge so I can't state that this blunt chopping will not affect your installation in a bad way.

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Some tracker miners get hung up on content they don't understand. If tracker daemon -f isn't showing any updates but tracker-extract is still hogging the CPU, maybe take a look in /tmp/tracker-extract-files.*. If the same symlink sits around there for any length of time, it's crashed the miner process. It's important to remove that file from anywhere that tracker will find it, as otherwise it'll crash again.

(a summary of my response originally here: no progress updates from gnome tracker)

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  • I find tracker's indexing functions too useful to remove from my system, so I put up with its foibles Commented Jun 22, 2019 at 20:17
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It seems like the nautilus tracker has some sort of CPU usage issue. Use another GUI file manager, like thunar.

The commands below remove nautilus and install thunar on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get remove nautilus sudo apt-get install thunar
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    Could you edit your answer to add any reference for the high CPU usage of nautilius or to state that it is just from personal experience. Commented Nov 10, 2021 at 9:18

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