swap mem keeps increasing: baloo_file_extractor causing it.

xezor · 2025-05-19 05:33:32

I have kde plamsa as my de, i installed pdf reader : okular for it, but when i used it, my laptop started getting hot, so i used `htop` to see what is the cause of this. and I see my swap mem at 600+mb when i am using only less than 2gb of ram. the top culprit was baloo_file_extractor the swap mem kept on increasing.

how do i fix this ? i see that plasma and some others depends on baloo , can i remove it ? or disable it ?

edit : okay, i just restart my laptop, and without opening anything the first thing i do is `htop` , and ugghh again it's the baloo_file_extractor on the top consuming mem again! i've deleted okular and still it's causing this problem.

seth · 2025-05-19 06:05:29

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Baloo# … he_indexer
Those indexers will open a lot of files, putting them into the FS cache.
"using only less than 2gb" according to what?

free -h
cat /proc/meminfo

If you've some huge files you might end up having to swap out but then the file gets released and can be dropped from the cache and now you've (inactive) anon pages in the swap and a lot of "free" RAM.
Do you use zswap or a zram device?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Zswap (iirc the wiki is dated and zswap had been disabled again by default?)

xezor · 2025-05-19 06:28:24

when I used htop it showed Mem : [1.79G/7.50G] & Swap : [ 522M/3.75G ]

I am using a zram device.

seth · 2025-05-19 06:32:15

Yeah, forget about htop or other aggregators, at least look at free and the real data is in /proc/meminfo
Make absolutely sure that you've not zswap enabled on top.

Nothing of this however causes major cpu load - that's (likely) just the indexer at work.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-05-19 05:33:32

swap mem keeps increasing: baloo_file_extractor causing it.

#2 2025-05-19 06:05:29

Re: swap mem keeps increasing: baloo_file_extractor causing it.

#3 2025-05-19 06:28:24

Re: swap mem keeps increasing: baloo_file_extractor causing it.

#4 2025-05-19 06:32:15

Re: swap mem keeps increasing: baloo_file_extractor causing it.

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