How to configure tracker3?

mbod · December 1, 2021, 11:07am

I am giving gnome another try. I am currently struggling with tracker3. I can not find good information in the web how to configure it and what tracker3 is actually supposed to do. Here is an example of what I mean.

tracker3 has indexed my files:

# tracker3 status                                                              
Currently indexed: 17994 files, 1380 folders
Remaining space on database partition: 52,8?GB (33,12%)
All data miners are idle, indexing complete
13 recorded failures

Somehow it does seem to track my home directory multiple times:

# tracker3 index
Path                                                                                                      Recursive                         
/home/matthias/Schreibtisch                                                                               *
/home/matthias                                                                                            *
/home/matthias/Musik                                                                                      *
/home/matthias                                                                                            *
/home/matthias/Videos                                                                                     *
/home/matthias                                                                                            -
/home/matthias                                                                                            -

It also finds files multiple times at the same location

# tracker3 search interbench-output.ods
Results:
  file:///home/matthias/interbench-output.ods
  interbench-output.ods

  file:///home/matthias/interbench-output.ods
  interbench-output.ods

For some files I can search by content and find them:

# tracker3 search "total number of events:"
Results:
  file:///home/matthias/kernel-benchmark.txt
  ?10.0020s     total number of?

But for others this does not work. I have create a file /home/matthias/Dokumente/TEST.xyz123 with content:

# cat /home/matthias/Dokumente/TEST.xyz123
es ist ein test
Aloa Hipipi

I can find the file by a partial name search:

# tracker3 search  TEST.xyz                            
Results:
  file:///home/matthias/Dokumente/TEST.xyz123
  TEST.xyz123

  file:///home/matthias/Dokumente/TEST.xyz123
  TEST.xyz123

Again it finds the file two times. Why?

But I can not search for the content of the file:

# tracker3 search "Aloa Hipipi"            
Results:

This is all totally inconsistent.

Furthermore I do not see the corresponding settings with dconf-editor.

This is what gsettings finds:

# gsettings list-recursively |grep -i tracker
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.FTS ignore-numbers true
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.FTS ignore-stop-words true
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.FTS enable-unaccent true
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.FTS enable-stemmer false
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Extract text-allowlist ['*.txt', '*.md', '*.mdwn']
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Extract max-bytes 1048576
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Extract wait-for-miner-fs false
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files index-optical-discs false
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files index-single-directories ['$HOME', '&DOWNLOAD']
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files enable-monitors true
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files index-on-battery-first-time true
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files index-recursive-directories ['&DESKTOP', '&DOCUMENTS', '&MUSIC', '&PICTURES', '&VIDEOS', 'Dokumente', 'PDF']
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files removable-days-threshold 3
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files ignored-directories ['po', 'CVS', 'core-dumps', 'lost+found']
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files index-on-battery true
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files index-applications true
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files throttle 0
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files ignored-directories-with-content ['.trackerignore', '.git', '.hg', '.nomedia', 'Downloads']
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files index-removable-devices false
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files ignored-files ['*~', '*.o', '*.la', '*.lo', '*.loT', '*.in', '*.csproj', '*.m4', '*.rej', '*.gmo', '*.orig', '*.pc', '*.omf', '*.aux', '*.tmp', '*.vmdk', '*.vm*', '*.nvram', '*.part', '*.rcore', '*.lzo', 'autom4te', 'conftest', 'confstat', 'Makefile', 'SCCS', 'ltmain.sh', 'libtool', 'config.status', 'confdefs.h', 'configure', '#*#', '~$*.doc?', '~$*.dot?', '~$*.xls?', '~$*.xlt?', '~$*.xlam', '~$*.ppt?', '~$*.pot?', '~$*.ppam', '~$*.ppsm', '~$*.ppsx', '~$*.vsd?', '~$*.vss?', '~$*.vst?', 'mimeapps.list', 'mimeinfo.cache', 'gnome-mimeapps.list', 'kde-mimeapps.list', '*.directory']
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files low-disk-space-limit -1
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files crawling-interval -1
org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files initial-sleep 15
ca.desrt.dconf-editor.Settings saved-pathbar-path '/org/freedesktop/tracker/'
ca.desrt.dconf-editor.Settings saved-view '/org/freedesktop/tracker/'

But in dconf-editor I only see a section called tracker and not Tracker3:

# dconf list /org/freedesktop/        
tracker/

I am really lost here. Any help is appreciated.

mbod · December 2, 2021, 8:03am

I guess I sorted this out. I had to reset everything:

I used gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files index-recursive-directories ... to only contain my home directory
I did reset the tracker3 index:
tracker3 reset -sr and
tracker3 reset -f [all directories that have been index so far]

This basically did the trick.

The only open question that remains is: Why cant I configure “org.freedesktop.Tracker3....” with dconf-editor?

danistov · April 6, 2024, 8:01pm

@mbod
hi,
I’ve been trying to fix the tracker3 problem for a while. I have also used dconf-editor and I have played with tracker3 reset, status, info, etc… in terminal

I still have the problem that nautilus does not show the result like tracker3 search in the terminal
(I get it with some directory that hangs directly from root, like /etc, but it doesn’t work with other directories where I have my data)

Have you managed to find a better solution?

divestoclimb · April 18, 2025, 8:39pm

Just joined to say that I was experiencing the same problem and found what was likely the issue.

First, using gsettings to edit org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files just edits org.freedesktop.tracker.miner.files. They appear to be the same thing.

Second, the reason the home directory is appearing in the index multiple times is because the special values like ‘&DESKTOP’, ‘&DOWNLOAD’, etc are set to the home directory. See $HOME/.config/user-dirs.default and you likely have those directories set wrong.