Workaround for tracker-miner-f high CPU utilization

High CPU utilization
Workaround for tracker causing high CPU utilization

One fine day I heard a laptop of mine making a sustained noise. I thought immediately of high CPU utilization. My intuition was right.

The issue was happening in Debian 11, running the Linux kernel 5.10.0-17-686-pae. Yeah, you’re right, it’s an i686 still functional machine. The issue began suddenly, but once it started remained happening for hours with no signs to stop.

I checked the processes using “top” and soon found the culprits. They were:

  • tracker-miner-f
  • tracker-extract
  • tracker-store

I have never seen these guys before, so, I started browsing the web for advisory… I found a good match in the thread tracker-miner-f taking over 100% of cpu. First, I learned that tracker-miner-f is Gnome’s file indexer. I had no idea about it. Anyway, I searched for any systemctl command to disable it, and found none. OK… so, I continued reading and figured out to uninstall these packages:

  • tracker-miner-fs
  • tracker-extract
  • tracker

but I noticed a removal of any of them (or all of them) would impact nautilus; so, I dismissed the idea of uninstalling them.

Then, I emptied the cache of tracker:

rm -f .cache/tracker/*

but the issue came back later.

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