nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

[heinkel_111]

After migrating to kde 4.2 (by enabling the backports repository) yesterday, I have noticed konqueror stalling at irregular intervals. It is kind of strange, only one konqueror window seems to stall and I can do things like create posts on kubuntuforums pondering what this problem is caused by in another window.

Anyway, I have opened up a konsole window and checking with top I find that every time these lock-up happen, the process called nepomukservices is running at nearly 100%.

What does this process really do, and what is taking it so long, and why is it working so hard? I have read something about semantic desktop and tagging files, but come on, I don't think I have tagged a single file yet, except photos in digikam and some songs in amarok - I didn't think nepomuk was involved in those - so what is it really doing?

I am not surprised if there is some kind of perpetually repeating loop bug involved in this

[Teunis]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

Go into the System settings and Desktop search where you can switch it off.

[heinkel_111]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

...or kill it, I'd be able to do that, but with respect that does not really answer my question concerning what is it this thing really does? And what is it really supposed to do?

Looks like a bug in launchpad is on the way. I kept it running since the original post and it is still at 100% CPU. Geez, KDE 4 is pretty advanced technology some times, I think I am gonna go buy a cluster to run this gizmo :P

[heinkel_111]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

Of course someone else has reported this before, here you go - link to bugreport in launchpad, please fill in: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/318065

[The Liquidator]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

For information on nepomuk, see here

http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/x...ect+Objectives

[heinkel_111]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

Dude, after having read a little about it - what the *beeeeeeeeeep* is this piece of trouble?
It is an information collector - and to whom is that information made available? The presentations on the nepomuk website covers information sharing in large organizations. The main story seem to be that information is made available for other users than the user of a single desktop computer. That is great, for information that we want to share, and it is a good thing for large organizations that by some right own the information which is made and collected through work hours they pay for.

On the other hand - no one outside my house should have access to information on my computer... Currently I am glad I disabled this I can't understand why it is a standard feature in KDE enabled in Kubuntu. It does not work and it is dubious that it is of assistance to anyone but Mr Big Brother.

[The Liquidator]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

Yep, I wasn't entirely sure about it myself - I got the feeling that the general aim is to harmonise everything within the desktop within a structure that would then harmonise with everyone else who was using it. I cannot imagine the sharing of data being mandatory, there must be an element of "opt-in" I am sure.

The fact that it can be disabled is obviously a good thing - the fact that it is running by default maybe not so good.

[Nate]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

Nepomuk is primarily designed to share information between applications. It's not designed to share your private information with the kde developers or anyone else. That means, for example, if you fill out contact information for someone in one kde application, that contact information can then be accessed in Dolphin, in plasma applets, etc. It is also being designed to allow advanced desktop searching, so you could eventually search for something like "photo of joe hernandez from 2007 which is no larger than 1024x768."

Naturally, a part of the design would be to allow nepomuk to work in networked environments. So if one person adds joe hernandez to their business contact list, the entire business would immediately have access to it. You would need to specifically setup your network to allow this, and as far as I know, they are a long way from achieving that goal.

[Teunis]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

Come on guys, this has nothing to do with sharing information with others outside of your computer.

The (rough) idea is one single database that contains all settings of your desktop and as such helps speed up switching between applications by sharing the data and settings.

You can switch on Strigi as a separate part, Strigi is like a data indexer similar to Google desktop search.
Again nothing is shared outside of your computer but you can search all documents from this single database for keywords.
In principle damn good, in practise you need a very powerful computer to handle the live updating and when you have a lot of documents the database gets really big as well requiring lots of memory.

(In the mean time Nate has given about the same info except about Strigi so I'll post anyway.)

[heinkel_111]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

It does not make sense that this should require, or even deserve 90-100% cpu for hours on end. Save my desktop settings? Share information between applications?

I guess that should require that the applications themselves are built for a nepomuk backend then? Or does nepomuk hack into other application's datastores to see if something useful can be snooped out of, for example, an e-mail?

The webpages presenting nepomuk are so full of big words it is not really possible to see what nepomuk actually does, furthermore, can I inspect the results of this data harvest somewhere??

What I really feel is lacking here is that somewhere there should be an obvious benefit to the user. For now, I am skeptic about this project.

[Nate]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

Have you ever used the new Windows desktop search, or Google desktop search, or Spotlight on the mac, or Copernic desktop search? The idea is to make searching for files on your computer as easy as it is to search the web with google. Just type in keywords that may exist anywhere on your computer and out pops the document(s) that you want instantly.

You may label it as "snooping"...but technically it's called indexing, and that's what nepomuk is failing at in your 90-100% cpu problem.

I can fully understand that this has potential for security concerns....but perhaps a better way to visualize it is your own computer accessing your own files. Nepomuk is part of kde. It's not some third-party spyware.

As for the benefits to the user, currently there are almost none. Feel free to turn it off until they get it right in 6 months or a year.

[Guest]

Re: nepomukservices locking up things in kde 4.2

fine