Re: [Tracker] a little bit of feedback

["Tomi N/A" <hefest gmail com>]

2009/11/21 Tomi N/A <hefest gmail com>:
> Hi everyone,
>
> since I've just joined the mailing list, I'd like to say that tracker
> is a joy to use...when it works. ;-)
>
> I have three observations I'd like to share in order to help make
> tracker better.
>
>
> #1
> In spite of having used tracker for some time now, I've never been
> able to investigate why a certain (plain text) file was found in a
> seach and another isn't. It would go a long way in helping users
> understand the indexer's behaviour if there was some kind of log file
> which listed all of the files tracker intends to index, all of the
> files tracker attempted to index and the result of the attempt. As it
> stands, tracker has a couple of log files, but they don't seem useful.
> This is what they look like after a re-index (last night):
>
> $ ll ~/.local/share/tracker/tracker*log
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tna tna 164719 2009-11-21 17:16
> /home/tna/.local/share/tracker/trackerd.log
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tna tna      0 2009-11-21 15:37
> /home/tna/.local/share/tracker/tracker-extract.log
> -rw-r--r-- 1 tna tna      0 2009-11-21 16:05
> /home/tna/.local/share/tracker/tracker-indexer.log
> -rw------- 1 tna tna   8446 2009-05-13 18:18
> /home/tna/.local/share/tracker/tracker.log
> tna potjeh:~$
>
> $ head ~/.local/share/tracker/tracker*log
> ==> /home/tna/.local/share/tracker/trackerd.log <==
>
> 20 Nov 2009, 12:41:13: Tracker-Warning **: Error loading
> query:'sqlite-fulltext.sql' #0, Cannot use virtual tables in
> shared-cache mode
>
> 20 Nov 2009, 12:41:13: Tracker-Warning **: Error loading
> query:'sqlite-fulltext.sql' #0, Cannot use virtual tables in
> shared-cache mode
>
> 20 Nov 2009, 13:36:35: GLib-GIO-Critical **: g_file_hash: assertion
> `G_IS_FILE (file)' failed
>
> 20 Nov 2009, 13:36:35: GLib-GIO-Critical **: g_file_hash: assertion
> `G_IS_FILE (file)' failed
>
> 20 Nov 2009, 13:36:35: GLib-GIO-Critical **: g_file_hash: assertion
> `G_IS_FILE (file)' failed
>
> ==> /home/tna/.local/share/tracker/tracker-extract.log <==
>
> ==> /home/tna/.local/share/tracker/tracker-indexer.log <==
>
> ==> /home/tna/.local/share/tracker/tracker.log <==
> 13 May 2009, 09:36:54:805 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:39:59:090 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:41:52:989 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:41:53:020 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:41:53:031 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:42:02:750 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:42:02:921 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:42:03:056 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:42:03:060 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> 13 May 2009, 09:42:03:064 - Error - cannot end transaction. Rolling back...
> tna potjeh:~$
>
> The start of the files is representative of the rest of their content.
>
>
> #2
> Loads, and I mean loads of my files are missing. Tracker told me it
> intends to index cca. 85000 files in my home directory, but the number
> of files I have is closer to...let's see:
>
> $ locate home | wc -l
> 440551
> tna potjeh:~$
>
> I should point out that there are no users in /home other than myself.
> I understand that tracker supports a limited set of file types, but I
> don't see a reason for it to not at least index the full path to a
> file, including it's name, regardless of the type. I'm not sure how
> it's supposed to behave with files of an unknown type (because there's
> little visibility of what the indexer is doing), but the behaviour I
> see places tracker's coverage at just under 20% of the total number of
> files. Is it because of my disk usage (95% used, 11GB free)? I would
> definitely like to be able to answer questions like this by asking the
> tool or checking the logs.
>
>
> #3
> It seems impossible to tell the indexer (via it's properties GUI) that
> it' should not index mounted disks without restarting the indexer. I
> would like not to restart the indexer and to store the preference for
> the next run, whenever it might happen.
> What I see in the preferences GUI is that if I decline to restart the
> indexer, the "index mounted disks" property is silently reset to
> "true".
>
>
> There are also problems when using find-as-you-type within the
> deskbar-applet, but I don't believe this is the place to discuss those
> (please correct me if I'm wrong).
>
> So, in summary, I would heartily welcome a lot more visibility of
> tracker's activities (at least in some kind of a debug mode), would
> like to understand why 80+% of my files aren't indexed, which ones
> they are and would appreciate a small bug fix in the indexer
> preferences dialogue. :-)
>
> I'm running Ubuntu, currently 9.04, on a Pentium M with 2GB RAM.
>
> I hope someone finds my report of some value and have no problem
> providing additional information and performing a test or two if it
> will help.
>
> Cheers,
> Tomislav

Just wanted to add the following 2 points:

4# CPU usage is 100%, but appears to be running in circles:
$ tracker-status -fd
Press Ctrl+C to end follow of Tracker state
Tracker status changed from 'None' --> 'Indexing'
  Initial index                 : no
  In merge                      : no
  Is paused manually            : no
  Is paused for low battery     : no
  Is paused for IO              : no
  Is indexing enabled           : yes
Tracker status changed from 'Indexing' --> 'Optimizing'
Tracker status changed from 'Optimizing' --> 'Idle'
Tracker status changed from 'Idle' --> 'Indexing'
Tracker status changed from 'Indexing' --> 'Optimizing'
Tracker status changed from 'Optimizing' --> 'Idle'
Tracker status changed from 'Idle' --> 'Indexing'
Tracker status changed from 'Indexing' --> 'Optimizing'
Tracker status changed from 'Optimizing' --> 'Idle'
Tracker status changed from 'Idle' --> 'Indexing'

5#
tracker has /my/test/folder/myfile.ods in it's index and is able to
find it if I search for "myfil", but can't find anything with
"folder": is this the expected behaviour?

Cheers,
Tomislav