Jerry Tan wrote:
> Hi, Darren,
> please see my answer inline.
>
> Darren J Moffat :
> > Shi-Ying Irene Huang wrote:
> >> Ubuntu bundles tracker as its default desktop search tool, and
> >> Suse bundles beagle as its default desktop search tool.
> >> Meta Tracker needs to be integrated into Solaris also since >>
> there is not desktop search tool.
> >
> > So why are we choosing tracker and not beagle ? I wouldn't hold up
> > the case for the answer but I'd like to know since I'd heard of beagle
> > before but not tracker.
> >
> Because beagle is a mono based application, which is a .Net runtime
> environment on Linux platform.
> As Brian said that, sun has no plan to integrate mono now.
>
> >> 4. Technical Description:
> >> 4.1. Details:
> >>
> >> Meta Tracker's key features includes:
> >> * Extracts file contents as plain text and indexes them.
> >> * Extracts Meta data from file also, for example, >>
> Artist/Title from one mp3 file
> >> * Responds in real time to file system changes, automatically
> >> keeping its meta data database up to date.
> >
> > How does it do that on Solaris ?
>
> Tracker depends on gamin API to monitor file system changes.
> Please refer to LSARC/2007/398 for more informations.
>
> >
> > * What is the performance impact of doing this ?
> Tracker daemon itself is a light weight daemon.
>
> When its indexer to filter file, it always runs in low priority as "nice
> -n19".
> And user can set preference for "throttle" from 0 to 100.
> if throttle is bigger than 0, tracker will call g_usleep(throttle) to
> sleep current thread after indexing each file.
>
>
>
> >
> > * What is the impact on disks spinning down and cpu's clocking down by
> > adding this ?
> > I'm asking this because I've had bad experiences with spotlight
> > on MacOS X keeping disks spinning sometimes.
> >
>
> Our QA has tested tracker for some builds,
> it does not cost much when indexing for the first time.
> And after it, trackerd is very light weight.
That is very subjective and highly dependent on the size and type of the
users home directory content. It is also likely dependent on wither the
home dir was local or remove.
I'd rather have seen some numbers. However this is more of a C-Team
than an ARC issue so I'm not going to hold the case up for that.
> > * Does this work if the users home directory is NFS mounted ?
> Yes, it can index files on NFS directory also.
> And there is one option which can set in preference ------ "allow to
> index mounted directory".
What about the question where the user is logged in multiple times
from different systems all sharing the same home directory ? Will there
be only one copy of trackerd ? or will there be multiple copes possibly
corrupting the database as they all try to write to it ?
You also haven't answered if the database works cross architecture.
> >
> > * How does this work with Trusted Extensions ? for example will there
> > be a trackerd running per label ?
>
> I don't think that there is any difference when run with Trusted Extension.
> Please correct me if I am wrong.
Trusted Extensions have multiple gnome desktops each running in a
different zone (eg multiple copies of nautilus) including some stuff for
the user running in the global zone (eg metacity).
This case needs to document wither or not tracker will be running in:
a) the global zone (Trusted Path)
In which case it *will* need to be label aware and not
use a single database.
b) all zones that represent lables.
c) not run at all with TX enabled (not ideal)
--
Darren J Moffat
