How do I stop and remove KDE Baloo that is broken and filling up my syslog file?

Question

KDE baloo has recently caused rsyslog to start logging many errors.

Part of 'Syslog'

Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PositionDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid
Mar  3 15:01:53 harry-S340 baloo_file.desktop[2982]: org.kde.baloo.engine: PostingDB::put MDB_BAD_TXN: Transaction must abort, has a child, or is invalid

It caused my /var/log/syslog to grow exponentially, it filled the disk once already, I've since disabled rsyslog to stop this from destroying my SSD and making Ubuntu unusable but I don't know what Baloo is or how to stop and uninstall it. When i fist noticed this /var/log/syslog had grown to 66GB causing my disk to be FULL. I was able to delete it and log back in and disable rsyslog through recovery mode. Running rsyslog for one second caused it to go up to 75MB.

'Neofetch --off' result

OS: Ubuntu 19.10 x86_64 
Host: 81NC Lenovo IdeaPad S340-15API 
Kernel: 5.3.0-40-generic 
Uptime: 11 mins 
Packages: 3040 (dpkg), 38 (snap) 
Shell: bash 5.0.3 
Resolution: 1920x1080 
DE: GNOME 
WM: Mutter 
WM Theme: Adwaita 
Theme: Yaru-dark [GTK2/3] 
Icons: Yaru [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: gnome-terminal 
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx (8) @ 2.100GHz 
GPU: AMD ATI 04:00.0 Picasso 
Memory: 2756MiB / 5945MiB

I don't want to uninstall the whole of KDE straight away but if that is the only way to get rid of this broken program then I happily will.

Other commands

harry@harry-S340:~$ whereis baloo
baloo:

harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove baloo
[sudo] password for harry: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'baloo' is not installed, so not removed
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 4 not to upgrade.

harry@harry-S340:~$ whereis baloo_file
baloo_file: /usr/bin/baloo_file

harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove baloo_file
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package baloo_file

harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo systemctl status baloo_file
Unit baloo_file.service could not be found.

Pressing tab to see all the commands that have baloo in them:

harry@harry-S340:~$ baloo
balooctl                           baloo_filemetadata_temp_extractor
baloo_file                         baloosearch
baloo_file_extractor               balooshow

these all don't have any manuals

harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloo
No manual entry for baloo
harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloo_file
No manual entry for baloo_file
harry@harry-S340:~$ man balooctl
No manual entry for balooctl
harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloosearch
No manual entry for baloosearch
harry@harry-S340:~$ man balooshow
No manual entry for balooshow
harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloo_filemetadata_temp_extractor
No manual entry for baloo_filemetadata_temp_extractor
harry@harry-S340:~$ man baloo_file_extractor
No manual entry for baloo_file_extractor

Desktop file mentioned in `syslog`

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=baloo_file
X-KDE-StartupNotify=false
X-KDE-autostart-condition=baloofilerc:Basic Settings:Indexing-Enabled:true
X-KDE-autostart-phase=0
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
OnlyShowIn=KDE;GNOME;Unity;XFCE
NoDisplay=true

Requests

Balooctl status

harry@harry-S340:~$ balooctl status
Baloo File Indexer is running
Indexer state: Indexing file content
Total files indexed: 109,311
Files waiting for content indexing: 3
Files failed to index: 4
Current size of index is 507.65 MiB

harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo balooctl disable
[sudo] password for harry: 
Disabling and stopping the File Indexer

this stopped rsyslog filling up /var/log/syslog.

Thanks, Harry

Did `balooctl status` and updated question with result. index 4 failed is this causing this. — Harry S, Mar 03 '20 at 15:33
```Baloo File Indexer is running Indexer state: Indexing file content Total files indexed: 109,311 Files waiting for content indexing: 3 Files failed to index: 4 Current size of index is 507.65 MiB``` — Harry S, Mar 03 '20 at 15:36
By the way you need to resolve "0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 4 not to upgrade." as well. — DK Bose, Mar 03 '20 at 15:38
result ```harry@harry-S340:~$ sudo balooctl disable [sudo] password for harry: Disabling and stopping the File Indexer``` — Harry S, Mar 03 '20 at 15:43
Don't use `sudo` unless it's explicitly required. It shouldn't be needed in this case. — DK Bose, Mar 03 '20 at 15:47
thought it might be needed as it is like `systemctl`, anyway is `baloo` required by KDE Plasma or can it be removed and what is its package name? — Harry S, Mar 03 '20 at 15:53
Baloo isn't a typical package that can be uninstalled with `sudo apt purge ...`. To see packages involving `baloo`, run `apt list --installed | grep -i baloo`. But now baloo is turned off permanently on your system and there's no need to "remove" it. — DK Bose, Mar 03 '20 at 15:56

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 25 '23 at 21:09

11

Here is how I removed baloo

balooctl disable                  # stops the service
sudo apt install -s baloo         # where to find baloo
sudo apt remove --purge libkf5balooengine5
rm -rf .local/share/baloo/        # removes the index files; they can be several GB

There are some related answers at Baloo creates 64GB index, takes half my memory and 25% CPU

edited Jan 25 '23 at 21:09

RafDouglas C. Tommasi

123
5

answered May 24 '20 at 17:40

Christians

594
7
15

3

`sudo apt remove --purge libkf5balooengine5` isn't an option for me, because it removes a lot of useful software (`dolphin`, `gwenview`, `kinfocenter`, `plasma-desktop`/`plasma-workspace`, `sddm-theme-breeze`), but `balooctl disable` really helped. – Sasha Aug 27 '20 at 06:12

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered May 23 '21 at 07:24

7

For me, it just helped to disable content indexing like this:

balooctl config set contentIndexing no

This way, baloo should quickly make the index just for file names, so you can still search for file names in Dolphin.

answered May 23 '21 at 07:24

Mišo Lašan

81
1
2

Is this permanent? Does it persist a reboot? – Silicomancer Nov 17 '21 at 20:01
From my experience, yes. – Mišo Lašan Mar 22 '22 at 05:26

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 02 '20 at 20:45

4

I need to keep baloo, this corrected the syslog debugging issue, so I ran the following with success:

balooctl disable && balooctl purge && balooctl enable

Checking Status with balooctl status I get:

Baloo File Indexer is running
Indexer state: Idle
Total files indexed: 1,287
Files waiting for content indexing: 0
Files failed to index: 0
Current size of index is 16.04 MiB

Everything is now fine, disabling, purging, re-enabling the service keeps monitoring syslog in case

edited Nov 02 '20 at 20:45

Lorenz Keel

8,362
8
36
49

answered Nov 02 '20 at 18:48

Marc-Andre Heroux

41
1

`baloo` was reading and writing a ton of data and I needed to keep it since it would break with my desktop environment. This stopped baloo from reading and writing so much, thank you! – mrbolichi Mar 06 '22 at 11:33

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 11 '20 at 02:32

This removed everything baloo without removing dolphin, plasma, kde. I was having screen lockups and the baloo_file indexer taking 112% cpu--I lost work rebooting because I could not even move into a terminal window and kill baloo_file. I am going to make this a cron script in case upgrades re-install baloo. You'd think the maintainer would renice baloo_file to lowest priority! That would not be great. I'm in Ubuntu 20.10 desktop.

balooctl disable 

for baloo in `dpkg --list 'baloo-kf5*' 'libkf5baloo5*' 'libkf5balooengine5*' 'libkf5baloowidgets-bin*' 'libkf5baloowidgets-data*' 'libkf5baloowidgets5*' | sed -n -E '/^ii/s/^ii[\t ]+([^\t :]+).*/\1/p'`
 do echo $baloo
 sudo snap remove $baloo
 sudo dpkg --ignore-depends=$baloo --purge $baloo
done

rm -rf .local/share/baloo/

sudo updatedb ; ls `locate baloo`