[gentoo-user] What is the point of baloo?

[Wols Lists]

It always annoys me, but baloo seems to be being an absolute nightmare
at the moment.

Iirc, it's "the file indexer for KDE" - in other words it knackers your
response time reading all the files, wastes disk space building an
index, and all for what?

So that programs you never use can a bit faster? What the hell is the
point of shaving 10% of a run time of no seconds at all?

I tried to kill it and it appears to have just restarted. Is there a use
flag I can use to just get rid of it completely?

What I find really frustrating is it claims to have been "built for
speed". If it's streaming the contents of disk into ram so it can index
it, it's going to completely knacker your system response whatever
(especially if a program I WANT running is trying to do the same thing!)

Cheers,
Wol

[Mark Knecht]

Post by Wols Lists
It always annoys me, but baloo seems to be being an absolute nightmare
at the moment.
Iirc, it's "the file indexer for KDE" - in other words it knackers your
response time reading all the files, wastes disk space building an
index, and all for what?
So that programs you never use can a bit faster? What the hell is the
point of shaving 10% of a run time of no seconds at all?
I tried to kill it and it appears to have just restarted. Is there a use
flag I can use to just get rid of it completely?
What I find really frustrating is it claims to have been "built for
speed". If it's streaming the contents of disk into ram so it can index
it, it's going to completely knacker your system response whatever
(especially if a program I WANT running is trying to do the same thing!)
Cheers,
Wol

In KDE System Settings search for baloo, select file search and turn off
indexing?

I turned it off years ago due to this sort of issue, as well as others.

sudo updatedb and locate are my friends. Very fast, zero overhead as best I
can tell

[Michael]

Post by Mark Knecht

Post by Wols Lists
It always annoys me, but baloo seems to be being an absolute nightmare
at the moment.
Iirc, it's "the file indexer for KDE" - in other words it knackers your
response time reading all the files, wastes disk space building an
index, and all for what?
So that programs you never use can a bit faster? What the hell is the
point of shaving 10% of a run time of no seconds at all?
I tried to kill it and it appears to have just restarted. Is there a use
flag I can use to just get rid of it completely?
What I find really frustrating is it claims to have been "built for
speed". If it's streaming the contents of disk into ram so it can index
it, it's going to completely knacker your system response whatever
(especially if a program I WANT running is trying to do the same thing!)
Cheers,
Wol

In KDE System Settings search for baloo, select file search and turn off
indexing?
I turned it off years ago due to this sort of issue, as well as others.
sudo updatedb and locate are my friends. Very fast, zero overhead as best I
can tell

balooctl status
balooctl disable

and if you want to get rid of the existing indexed database, then:

balooctl purge

However, unlike locate, baloo is meant to index not just file names, but also
metadata tags and relationships relevant to files, emails and contacts. Its
devs would argue it has a small footprint. So it is meant to be *more* than a
simple file name indexer.

Once you disable it, its status will show:

$ balooctl status
Baloo is currently disabled. To enable, please run balooctl enable

[Wols Lists]

Post by Michael
However, unlike locate, baloo is meant to index not just file names, but also
metadata tags and relationships relevant to files, emails and contacts. Its
devs would argue it has a small footprint. So it is meant to be*more* than a
simple file name indexer.

But what is the POINT of said index? If there's no point it's just a
total and complete waste of time and space!

So, far the only point I'm aware of is it is supposed to make kmail run
faster - an application I've never used.

Cheers,
Wol

[Jack]

Post by Wols Lists

Post by Michael
However, unlike locate, baloo is meant to index not just file names, but also
metadata tags and relationships relevant to files, emails and
contacts. Its
devs would argue it has a small footprint.  So it is meant to
be*more*  than a
simple file name indexer.

But what is the POINT of said index? If there's no point it's just a
total and complete waste of time and space!
So, far the only point I'm aware of is it is supposed to make kmail
run faster - an application I've never used.

While I've also always had KDE indexing turned off, baloo and associated
"stuff" allows searching through all your files (or a configurable
subset) not just mail.  It lets you find something you know you have but
forgot where you stashed it.  Also, I'm pretty sure that that high load
is only until baloo finishes one complete pass through all the files
it's been told to (or allowed to) index.  After that, it only needs to
index new or changed stuff.  I also believe there is a way to limit how
much cpu it uses, but I have no idea how, since I (like you and many
others) prefer to limit it to 0.

You would probably get a better discussion, including at least some
reasonable defense of baloo, posting on discuss.kde.org (their current
forum system.)  One recent example I did see there is that baloo (with
appropriate configuration) can let you see height and width of image
files in dolphin (the file manager.) No, I don't have any need for that
either, but I can see some users liking it.

One thing to keep in mind, I don't think folks like us (Gentoo users in
general) are really the primary target of KDE.  I suspect they are
(among other things) trying to produce a system that will attract users
from "that other OS" who may take things like poor performance but full
indexing for granted.

Jack

[Michael]

Post by Jack

Post by Wols Lists

Post by Michael
However, unlike locate, baloo is meant to index not just file names, but also
metadata tags and relationships relevant to files, emails and contacts. Its
devs would argue it has a small footprint. So it is meant to be*more* than a
simple file name indexer.

But what is the POINT of said index? If there's no point it's just a
total and complete waste of time and space!
So, far the only point I'm aware of is it is supposed to make kmail
run faster - an application I've never used.

While I've also always had KDE indexing turned off, baloo and associated
"stuff" allows searching through all your files (or a configurable
subset) not just mail. It lets you find something you know you have but
forgot where you stashed it. Also, I'm pretty sure that that high load
is only until baloo finishes one complete pass through all the files
it's been told to (or allowed to) index. After that, it only needs to
index new or changed stuff. I also believe there is a way to limit how
much cpu it uses, but I have no idea how, since I (like you and many
others) prefer to limit it to 0.
You would probably get a better discussion, including at least some
reasonable defense of baloo, posting on discuss.kde.org (their current
forum system.) One recent example I did see there is that baloo (with
appropriate configuration) can let you see height and width of image
files in dolphin (the file manager.) No, I don't have any need for that
either, but I can see some users liking it.
One thing to keep in mind, I don't think folks like us (Gentoo users in
general) are really the primary target of KDE. I suspect they are
(among other things) trying to produce a system that will attract users
from "that other OS" who may take things like poor performance but full
indexing for granted.
Jack

Yes, Baloo is meant to facilitate complicated and vague searches for e.g.,
some pdf or was it a png file file I received perhaps around 2 years ago, from
one of my contacts among work associates, which I transferred from my phone to
my PC over bluetooth.

It will also index objects soon after their creation, rather than wait for
some cronjob to kick in once a day.

However, if you have no such use case, then it is relatively easy for Gentoo
users to disable semantic-desktop and/or disable baloo.

[Peter Böhm]

Post by Wols Lists
It always annoys me, but baloo seems to be being an absolute nightmare
at the moment.
I tried to kill it and it appears to have just restarted. Is there a use
flag I can use to just get rid of it completely?

Do you mean use-flag "semantic-desktop" ?

(I have disabled it in my make.conf)

Reagrds,
Peter

[Wols Lists]

Post by Peter Böhm

Post by Wols Lists
It always annoys me, but baloo seems to be being an absolute nightmare
at the moment.
I tried to kill it and it appears to have just restarted. Is there a use
flag I can use to just get rid of it completely?

Do you mean use-flag "semantic-desktop" ?
(I have disabled it in my make.conf)

I guess I do. I've just disabled indexing as per Mark, and it's reduced
my load average from 12 "just like that". It's just an absolute pain in
the arse given that about the only KDE app I actually use is Konqueror.

But yes, I'll set -semantic-desktop in make.conf.

Why does all this crap default to "I'll waste as much of your computer
time as I can, and I won't tell you what I'm doing, or how to benefit
from it"?

In turning off indexing, I notice there's also plasma search. But I
haven't got a clue what all those widgets do. So I click on the "info"
button and I just get the description AGAIN. What's the point of all
this crap, if they can't be arsed to tell you what it DOES!?!?

Cheers,
Wol

[Mark Knecht]

Post by Wols Lists

Post by Peter Böhm

Post by Wols Lists
It always annoys me, but baloo seems to be being an absolute nightmare
at the moment.
I tried to kill it and it appears to have just restarted. Is there a use
flag I can use to just get rid of it completely?

Do you mean use-flag "semantic-desktop" ?
(I have disabled it in my make.conf)

I guess I do. I've just disabled indexing as per Mark, and it's reduced
my load average from 12 "just like that". It's just an absolute pain in
the arse given that about the only KDE app I actually use is Konqueror.
But yes, I'll set -semantic-desktop in make.conf.
Why does all this crap default to "I'll waste as much of your computer
time as I can, and I won't tell you what I'm doing, or how to benefit
from it"?
In turning off indexing, I notice there's also plasma search. But I
haven't got a clue what all those widgets do. So I click on the "info"
button and I just get the description AGAIN. What's the point of all
this crap, if they can't be arsed to tell you what it DOES!?!?
Cheers,
Wol

I do agree, and for a user like me primarily on Kubuntu I cannot
easily get away from having it on the machine so I'm happy to
just be able to turn it off.

As for documentation, it's horribly out-of-date and it's probably
the biggest negative about using Open Source as no one really
wants to write it, and most users don't read it anyway.

I feel ya!

- Mark