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The Ubuntu community has contributed 12232 ideas, 57574 comments, 1174524 votes

Idea #8179: Do not activate Data Crawlers per default



bug This idea was marked as already implemented the 12 May 08.
implemented
Already done!
(70)
Written by gfelix the 7 May 08 at 09:08. Category: System.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: Already implemented
Description
Today I find myself in this position:
My Kubuntu System was roaring and terrible slow. I was wondering: “Did something go wrong during the upgrade?” One look in “top” thought me it was a daemon a “pinot” daemon. An other Search tool.... I just deinstalled “Strigi”! Many people will not look up what is using their resources they just will say: “ubuntu is slow”. People who want to use a Search Tool are able to activate it! So:

Please do not activate Data Crawlers per default!
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Developer comments
Tracker is shipped in Ubuntu and not turned on by default.
Strigi is shipped in Kubuntu and not turned on by default.

Pinot is in universe and not installed by default at all, so maybe you installed that at some point.


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Comments
Auzy wrote on the 7 May 08 at 11:43
Why is it slow though? First time being indexed? If so, it would be better to simply do what Apple does, and make it more obvious that the system will be slow for a while (and an ETA) during the initial index. Or if its slow because we aren't indexing properly the first time, we should make it obvious the system is being indexed the first time, and index it properly..


Anyway.. big -1. Spotlight is efficient by apple, so its possible to fix it properly. So we should fix the problem PROPERLY. Not pretend it doesn't exist.

Disabling them by default wont fix anything. Instead, increase the resources on the project, and fix it properly, so that people don't end up with a useless feature which they cant enable.

andersja wrote on the 7 May 08 at 14:51
Agree with gfelix that in its current state this is not intuitive - especially for new users...

artir wrote on the 7 May 08 at 15:17
The same as above.

eric.thelin wrote on the 7 May 08 at 17:09
How about not enabling a feature until it has been implemented PROPERLY then? Obviously there will always be disagreement on what is good enough...

dee70 wrote on the 7 May 08 at 19:18
I wish i could vote for this more than once. I had it enabled one time and it made my hard disk move every 2 or 3 seconds - drove me nuts until I figured out what it was. This is right up there with the "disk check" on startup.

tgape wrote on the 7 May 08 at 20:23
It should be possible to have the indexing run at a low enough priority that it doesn't slow the system down. I realize that this is an I/O wait thing, which are generally not load-balanced nearly as well as CPU bound things, but it really shouldn't be that difficult to periodically check to see if other things are waiting on the disk, and if so, pause for a bit.

Another possible improvement for the initial install: make the database be able to take pre-searched batch updates. Then, you generate the pre-searched batch update for each package, and add it to each of the packages. Now, when the system's first installed, it has data for all of the standard files, and doesn't have to go through them.

Both of my suggestions are more for the pinot devs, rather than the Ubuntu devs. The second would require the Ubuntu devs generate the pre-searched batch updates.

Auzy wrote on the 8 May 08 at 01:42
One must take a look at songbird though as an example. Songbird 0.5 is slow for large libraries. However, one small change to the database in 0.6 apparently is making a massive improvement to the speed. Maybe there is a silver bullet for this too?


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