Background: I was running Ubuntu 24.04 upgraded from Ubuntu 22.04. The system was running perfect for 3 to 4 months, until an update in mid February. The next morning my system would not boot, no GRUB menu. I attempted to boot via the BIOS boot menu but there was nothing to boot to, no Windows or Ubuntu, nothing. After attempting to repair the boot loader I decided it would be easier to reinstall everything. I reinstalled Windows and then downloaded the current desktop (ubuntu-24.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso) file from the Ubuntu website. After installing and updating I had Ubuntu 24.04.2 installed and working.
With everything working I began customizing my system. I setup Thunderbird and Firefox. The system was working as expected until I installed and configured the autofs package. I could hear my HDD being accessed repeatedly and system response was intermittently slow. I looked at the system monitor and there was a lot of disk activity and network traffic. I removed the soft-link to my NAS and both network traffic and disk traffic was back to a low (normal) level. Reinstalling the soft-link, network and disk activity immediately increased. It was clear something was accessing my NAS and I assumed my NAS was being indexed.
Problem: Network & Disk Activity Degrades Usability Now I began investigating if my NAS was actually being indexed or if something else was causing the network and disk traffic. The first thing I did is review the Preferences/Performance parameters of the file manager. All three parameters were set to “On This Computer Only” so I concluded my NAS should not be indexed. From some reading I determined there is a daemon (tracker) that does index file systems. I executed apropos tracker and got a list of executable files containing tracker. tracker3-info seemed like a good place to start so I executed tracker3-info and it returned tracker meta data for the file on my NAS. It became very clear my NAS was being indexed. Then I remembered I have a laptop running Ubuntu 24.04.2 that I use when traveling. It connects to my NAS exactly the same as my desktop but I don’t remember it being a problem. I powered up the laptop and run tracker3-info but there wasn’t any meta data. Interesting there was a note at the bottom of the report that stated the file is “eligible.“ I take that to mean Tracker3 knows about the file but chose not to gather meta data. Clearly there is some difference between my laptop and desktop systems that Tracker3 uses to track, or not track files. I recall something on my desktop where Tracker3 is monitoring storage space, perhaps that’s the difference. Available storage space on my two systems is dramatically different (laptop being much less).
Now my task is to stop Tracker3 from indexing my NAS. I ran “gsettings list-schemas | grep -i tracker” (in a terminal window) for a list of tracker schemas. I got a list of three tracker schemas, the most interesting was “org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files.” I then run “gsettings list-keys org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files.” I got a list of keys, the two most interesting were, “ignored-directories” and “ignored-directories-with-content.” I ran “gsettings get org.freedesktop.Miner.Files ignored-directories” and got a list of associated values e.g. ‘core-dups’ and ‘lost+found’ that Tracker3 will not index. My assumption was, if I could add my NAS to the list my problem would be solved. So I added my NAS to the list but it didn’t stop Tracker3 from indexing my NAS. I then ran “tracker3-reset –filesystem” which reset Tracker3 and removes the meta data file(s). When Tracker3 started it was no longer indexing my NAS. I verified no meta data with “tracker3-info .” My problem was solved but perhaps not the best solution, an update could undo my changes. I decided to use gsettings for the values of “ignored-dicrectories-with-content.” A value in the list is ‘.trackerignore’ so I put the empty file ‘.trackerignore’ in the root of my NAS system and removed my soft link from the values of ‘ignore-directories’. I verified no data was being collected with tracker3-info . Not only was there no meta data but tracker reported the file is NOT eligible to be indexed (based on content filters).
Problem solved!
