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Tracker is now the default in Ubuntu 19.04, and I can successfully search for files and file contents in /home on an ext4 formatted drive. But I would also like to be able to search my ntfs drives. So how can I enable Tracker to search ntfs drives in the gnome search?

unable to find myfile.pdf located on NTFS drive

So far I have added my NTFS drive in Settings icon in the launcher -> Search -> Search Locations (gear icon)-> Other and, like recommended in Zeitgeist does not index folders in NTFS partition I also removed /media from PRUNEPATHS, executed sudo updatedb and rebooted - all to no avail.

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Also, I believe that Tracker is continuously running in the background and making my laptop slow. Can I mitigate the performance loss by deactivating indexing of file contents somehow?

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Bradzzv
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nazar2sfive
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  • Tracker is not installed on Ubuntu 17.10/18.04/18.10 by default. What version are you running? Perhaps a 16.04 Ubuntu Gnome version or an update thereof? – vanadium Oct 27 '18 at 08:33
  • @vanadium i installed it manually. I want myfile.pdf to appear on gnome search. – nazar2sfive Oct 27 '18 at 10:26
  • Still don know what version of Linux you are on. File name search works without tracker from within Gnome Shell since 18.04 onwards. – vanadium Oct 27 '18 at 11:59

1 Answers1

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I can't answer the "How to search NTFS drives with Tracker" part, but to answer the "How to reduce the load of Tracker" question:

Since tracker-preferences/tracker-gui are not available anymore in 19.04, you can use the dconf-Editor to edit Tracker's settings. If you are concerned about battery life or notebook performance while on battery, go to /org/freedesktop/tracker/miner/files/ and set index-on-battery to False .

To reduce CPU priority of Tracker, you can set sched_idle both in /org/freedesktop/tracker/miner/files/ and /org/freedesktop/tracker/extract to Always (as in "always set Tracker to lowest CPU-priority") so Tracker only works when the CPU is not being used by another program.

See System Resource Management here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Tracker/Documentation/Configuration

Bradzzv
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