#1120628 baloo6: Disabling baloo by default results in a confusing user experience

Package:
baloo6
Source:
baloo6
Description:
framework for file search and metadata management
Submitter:
Celejar
Date:
2025-11-17 21:43:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1120628#5
Date:
2025-11-13 16:36:02 UTC
From:
To:
I recently tried to get KDE/Plasma File Search working. Through the
KDE/Plasma UI, I enabled "File indexing" and set "Data to index: File
names and contents" - and nothing happened. The KDE interface status
line reported "Not Running, 0% complete", but gave no explanation as to
why the indexer wasn't running despite "File indexing" being enabled.

It took some web searching to learn that the KDE component that handles
indexing is something called baloo, and that the service's status can be checked
with "balooctl[6] status", and the service enabled and started with "balooctl[6]
enable / start". Since the KDE interface makes no mention of baloo and
the need to ensure that it's running, how is a normal user of the system
supposed to know this? (The KDE Help does mention that File Search
"internally uses a technology called Baloo to efficiently search through
the files," but it makes no mention of the fact that the service may be
disabled by one's distribution, or how to check its status and enable /
start it.)
#1120628#10
Date:
2025-11-16 23:10:41 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Le jeudi 13 novembre 2025, 17:36:02 heure normale d’Europe centrale Celejar a écrit :

I think there’s a misunderstanding about what the "Not Running, 0% complete" tries to convey.
This message only means that the indexer is not running *at that particular time*, and the underlying meaning is that there’s nothing to do because indexing was already done.

The File indexing checkbox does enable and disable baloo in the same way as the balooctl command does.

So maybe we can close this bug ?


Happy hacking,
--
Aurélien
#1120628#15
Date:
2025-11-16 23:10:41 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Le jeudi 13 novembre 2025, 17:36:02 heure normale d’Europe centrale Celejar a écrit :

I think there’s a misunderstanding about what the "Not Running, 0% complete" tries to convey.
This message only means that the indexer is not running *at that particular time*, and the underlying meaning is that there’s nothing to do because indexing was already done.

The File indexing checkbox does enable and disable baloo in the same way as the balooctl command does.

So maybe we can close this bug ?


Happy hacking,
--
Aurélien
#1120628#20
Date:
2025-11-17 14:13:20 UTC
From:
To:
"0% complete" means that "there's nothing to do because indexing was
already done"? If so, that's a really poorly worded message.

It does? As I reported above, "File indexing" is checked, "Data to
index" is set to "File names and contents", but:

~# balooctl6 status
Baloo is currently disabled. To enable, please run balooctl enable
#1120628#25
Date:
2025-11-17 15:31:26 UTC
From:
To:
Le 17 novembre 2025 15:13:20 GMT+01:00, Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> a écrit :

No you're right, I overlooked your message because I was seeing the same but with 100% on my machine.

OK strange then I will retry again but I'm pretty sure I was getting baloo activated / deactivated consistently with what I chose in the UI.

Could you try running systemsettings from a terminal and see if you get more info when changing the search config ?


Thanks,
--
Aurélien
#1120628#30
Date:
2025-11-17 21:40:59 UTC
From:
To:
On Mon, 17 Nov 2025 16:31:26 +0100 Aurélien COUDERC <libre@coucouf.fr> wrote:

...

Error fetching Baloo indexer state: "Did not receive a reply. Possible
causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the
message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout
expired, or the network connection was broken."