https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509009
Bug ID: 509009
Summary: Baloo fails to initialize and crashes silently on
Plasma 6, "The Baloo index can not be opened"
Classification: Frameworks and Libraries
Product: frameworks-baloo
Version First 6.3.0
Reported In:
Platform: Manjaro
OS: Linux
Status: REPORTED
Severity: normal
Priority: NOR
Component: general
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
Target Milestone: ---
**Product:** frameworks-baloo
**Component:** fileindexer
**System Information:**
- KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.6
- KDE Frameworks Version: (Could not be determined via kf6-config)
- Qt Version: (Could not be determined via kf6-config)
- Kernel Version: 6.16.4-2-MANJARO
- Distribution: Manjaro Linux
**Summary:**
The Baloo file indexer is completely non-functional on a Plasma 6 desktop
system. Any attempt to check the status via `balooctl6 status` results in the
error "The Baloo index can not be opened". The service appears to crash
silently and immediately upon starting, as it leaves no error messages in the
systemd journal. This issue is persistent and cannot be resolved by purging the
index or any other standard troubleshooting steps.
**Expected Behavior:**
`balooctl6 status` should report the indexer's current state (e.g., "Idle" or
"Indexing"). After a database purge, `balooctl6 resume` should trigger a new,
successful indexing run.
**Actual Behavior:**
`balooctl6 status` consistently and immediately returns the error "The Baloo
index can not be opened". The service is unusable.
**Troubleshooting Steps Taken (Chronological):**
1. **Initial State:** `balooctl6 status` reported "Indexing Status: Inactive"
despite a queue of over 1.5 million files on a desktop PC (ruling out
battery-saving as a cause).
2. **Stuck Process:** An attempt to purge the index with `balooctl6 purge`
failed with the message "failed to stop!", indicating the `baloo_file` process
was stuck and unresponsive.
3. **Forced Kill:** The stuck process was successfully terminated using
`killall baloo_file`.
4. **Successful Purge:** After the kill, `balooctl6 purge` ran successfully
and reported "Deleted the index database".
5. **Critical Failure on Resume:** `balooctl6 resume` was executed. The
command itself returned "File Indexer resumed", but this is where the critical
failure began.
6. **New Persistent Error:** Immediately after the resume, `balooctl6 status`
started reporting the error "The Baloo index can not be opened". This error has
persisted through all subsequent steps.
7. **Permissions Check:** Directory permissions for `~/.local/share/baloo/`
were checked with `ls -ld` and confirmed to be correct (owned by the user with
write permissions).
8. **Stale Lock File:** The contents of the directory were inspected (`ls
-l`), revealing only a single `index-lock` file. This indicated that the
process crashed during initialization after creating the lock file but before
creating the main `index` database.
9. **Manual Cleanup:** The stale `index-lock` file was manually removed (`rm
~/.local/share/baloo/index-lock`).
10. **Final Attempt:** The service was resumed again (`balooctl6 resume`). The
exact same error ("The Baloo index can not be opened") immediately reoccurred.
11. **Journal Check (Crucial Finding):** An attempt was made to find the root
cause by checking the systemd journal immediately after triggering the error.
The command `journalctl --since "1 minute ago" | grep -iE "baloo|lmdb"`
returned **NO OUTPUT**. This demonstrates that the Baloo service is crashing so
early and so completely that it cannot even write a failure message to the
system log.
12. **Filesystem Checks:** Both available disk space (`df -h`, 124G free) and
inode usage (`df -i`, dynamic inodes, likely Btrfs/XFS) were checked and
confirmed to not be the issue.
**Conclusion:**
The problem is not a simple configuration error, a stuck process, or a corrupt
database, as a full manual reset was performed. The silent crash, which leaves
no trace in the journal, strongly suggests a more fundamental bug, possibly a
segmentation fault or a critical library issue within Baloo or one of its core
dependencies on this specific Plasma 6 and Manjaro kernel combination.
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