journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

whoops · 2014-05-16 06:56:06

Hi!

I've been getting awful journal spam from what I believe to be the thunar thumbnailer while videos are being downloaded for a while now. Up to ~10 messages like this per second with only 2 running downloads:

archlinux org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1[3558]: [h264 @ 0x7f360d0b3300] AVC: nal size 0

Haven't been able to figure out where to turn those off without turning off any other messages. I like seeing "unimportant" messages / warnings, that's why I keep a terminal with my journal open in the first place. But that thumbnailer really is a BIT too verbose for my taste considering that the messages are just repeating constantly with no useful information.

Any hints?

whoops · 2014-08-23 16:07:44

Did not manage to get rid of those journal entries. Is there no way?

The amount of journal spam this generates on my machine renders having a system journal open in the first place totally useless. I rarely see ANY other messages hidden between tens of thousands of lines from the thumbnailer...

Last edited by whoops (2014-08-23 16:08:41)

lolilolicon · 2014-08-23 16:26:16

If you're sure it's thunar, complain upstream. Meanwhile, you can set MaxLevel* in /etc/systemd/journald.conf to exclude those from the journal. See journald.conf(5).

whoops · 2014-08-23 16:56:01

Thanks!

Tried setting maxlevel already though - don't remember exactly what level it was, but the spam seems to have a higher priority than most of the messages that I would find informative. Elevating the minimum priority left me with a (close to) empty journal

I don't know where to go upstream. When I asked around in various IRC channels to find out a while back, everyone just sent me somewhere else (systemd / xfce / thunar / ffmpegthhumbnailer / DBUS etc) so I came back here. No idea what to do about the problem....

lolilolicon · 2014-08-23 17:48:07

Is ffmpegthumbnailer the actual software that is doing the work & generating the error message? Then the fault is at ffmpegthumbnailer, obviously.
Might help: the spec (draft) is here https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Draf … nailerSpec
Are there maybe some switch to the ffmpegthumbnailer you can add to quiet it down?

whoops · 2014-08-23 18:11:41

I don't think there is a switch for ffmpegthumbnailer (according to --help at least, there isn't one). Also not sure where I would set that if it existed (or a simple "2> /dev/null" for that matter - in dbus source code somewhere + recompile!?). If I remember right, some guy in ffmpeg IRC said that "if output is too verbose for your taste then don't dump it all into a logfile / complain to the program that does that!"

Could be:
- Thunar requesting thumbnails repeatedly / too fast without checking if the target is a valid video file
- ffmpegthumbnailer being too noisy
- dbus relaying too many messages from ffmpegthumbnailer
- journald or whatever (/I lost track off how logs work when systemd was introduced ) setting the wrong loglvl for messages that are meant to be shown only when the thumbnailer is run manually in TTY?
- something entirely else because I'm not a programmer and even though I spent hours looking into this problem by now I still have no idea where it's coming from or what to do about it.

Last edited by whoops (2014-08-23 18:15:16)

lolilolicon · 2014-08-23 18:29:50

It's most certainly ffmpegthumbnailer being too verbose.
Try changing the Exec line in usr/share/thumbnailers/ffmpegthumbnailer.thumbnailer (there are probably some other .thumbnailer files in there you can refer to.) I don't know whether you can do stdout/stderr redirection in a desktop file but you can try.

whoops · 2014-08-23 19:05:23

That file does not seem to affect anything (even deleting / breaking it. Did an involuntary reboot too afterwards, but still the same log entries).

lolilolicon · 2014-08-23 19:19:28

In that case, I'm not sure what it is. I do not have either of Thunar or ffmpegthumbnailer installed, so really can't tell. Try `locate '*org.freedesktop.thumbnails*'`, see if there is a dbus service file...
Maybe it's unrelated to ffmpegthumbnailer? What if you uninstall it?

Last edited by lolilolicon (2014-08-23 19:20:25)

whoops · 2014-08-23 19:54:49

locate found nothing.

uninstalling gives me:
org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer1[24172]: (tumblerd:27795): tumbler-WARNING **: Failed to load plugin "tumbler-ffmpeg-thumbnailer.so": libffmpegthumbnailer.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
( and no more thumbnails or spam )

lolilolicon · 2014-08-23 20:15:32

Oh, so it's tumbler which uses ffmpegthumbnailer. Then you either blame tumbler or ffmpegthumbnailer. Probably tumbler.
Try adding redirection to the Exec line in /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.Tumbler.Thumbnailer1.service

Last edited by lolilolicon (2014-08-23 20:18:35)

whoops · 2014-08-23 20:43:18

Oh, thanks! I knew that "tumblerd" was involved, but I thought that was just the process name of the general plugin from+for dbus because that's what the package description sounds like... turns out it's part of xfce core...?
That could explain why everyone sent me somewhere else last time I tried... I'll give xfce's main bugtracker a try, it seems to have a tumbler section.

whoops · 2014-08-26 11:09:11

Uhm... has xfce become a zombie?
Not sure if anyone there is interested in continuing support / development - of tumbler at the very least.

What alternatives would be a good choice? pcmanfm (has a builtin thumbnailer I think.... trying if I get along with it instead of thunar atm)? Is lxde still more alive than xfce?

Last edited by whoops (2014-08-26 11:12:50)

lolilolicon · 2014-08-26 11:31:07

I'd say, nautilus should be fine. Personally, I don't care about xfce/lxde/cinnamon and the like... when I want to use a DE, I'll go with Gnome or KDE; otherwise, I go with a "minimalistic" setup.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-05-16 06:56:06

journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#2 2014-08-23 16:07:44

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#3 2014-08-23 16:26:16

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#4 2014-08-23 16:56:01

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#5 2014-08-23 17:48:07

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#6 2014-08-23 18:11:41

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#7 2014-08-23 18:29:50

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#8 2014-08-23 19:05:23

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#9 2014-08-23 19:19:28

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#10 2014-08-23 19:54:49

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#11 2014-08-23 20:15:32

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#12 2014-08-23 20:43:18

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#13 2014-08-26 11:09:11

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

#14 2014-08-26 11:31:07

Re: journal spam from org.freedesktop.thumbnails.Thumbnailer

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