tracker-miner errors in Syslog due to home directory not existing
Pihole, a popular ad-blocking software, typically runs on a server in headless mode. A user 'pihole' is created, but not /home/pihole because this directory is not needed. However, the logs flood with spam about tracker-miner not finding the user's home directories:
less /var/log/syslog.1
...
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn systemd[1051]: tracker-miner-fs.service: start operation timed out. Terminating.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn systemd[1051]: tracker-miner-fs.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn systemd[1051]: Failed to start Tracker file system data miner.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn systemd[1051]: tracker-miner-fs.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 14802.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn systemd[1051]: Stopped Tracker file system data miner.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn systemd[1051]: Starting Tracker file system data miner...
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Set scheduler policy to SCHED_IDLE
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Setting priority nice level to 19
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &DOCUMENTS. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &MUSIC. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &PICTURES. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &VIDEOS. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &DOWNLOAD. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &DOCUMENTS. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &MUSIC. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &PICTURES. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:11 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Unable to get XDG user directory path for special directory &VIDEOS. Ignoring this location.
Jun 26 00:01:40 vpn tracker-miner-f[256074]: Couldn't create new Files miner: 'Failed to load SPARQL backend: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.Tracker1': timed out (service_start_timeout=120000ms)'
Jun 26 00:01:40 vpn systemd[1051]: tracker-miner-fs.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 26 00:01:40 vpn systemd[1051]: tracker-miner-fs.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 26 00:01:40 vpn systemd[1051]: Failed to start Tracker file system data miner.
...the developers at pihole are not willing to change what they see as an issue with your code . I'm not sure how, but can you help?
See: https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/issues/4774 also https://askubuntu.com/questions/1281399/ubuntu-20-04-1-tracker-miner-errors-in-syslog
Edited by Carlos Garnacho