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It looks like some files or filenames can bomb tracker's file system miner.

Run as user:

tracker-control -S
(note capital S)

This shows the status of miners. If it says that the file system miner is disabled by the plugin you have a faulty condition.

You can then check:

tail -n 100 /var/log/syslog

This would show last error messages, and it shows actual files that could not be indexed anymore.

Remove the album that has the problem. I don't know if the reason is too long path, some characters in the names or the actual content of the mp3's but it came down to a individual album I had to remove.

After this you can reboot the phone (if unplugging the phone or starting the music application does not start the miners) or try starting the miners by hand typing

tracker-control -s
(Note minor s)

Running

tracker-control -F

shows the current status of the tracker miners. File system miner should go all the way to 99% or 100% and change to 'idle' when the indexing is over (it should not take very long to index some 5 gigs of music).


Edit: Do not blindly trust what /var/log/syslog says; When tracker meets broken files, at some point it dies completely and the rest of the innocent files will get rejected too with errors.

After testing I found out that my tracker problem was caused by several broken MP3s, however the first file mentioned in the log was not at fault.
I had to go through them one by one, and while some of the files listed were clearly broken, there was one MP3 that had visibly nothing wrong with it and it played without problems on computer. No copying or renaming it helped to get it recognised in N9. When trying to add that to MyDocs/Music, sometimes it just got ignored by music player with error message in syslog, and sometimes it killed the mining process.

Example of the error message in the /var/log/syslog:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Aug 5 17:43:14 (2012) tracker-miner-fs[4010]: GLIB WARNING ** Tracker - Got extraction DBus error on 'file:///home/user/MyDocs/Music/Chris%20Isaak/Beyond%20The%20Sun/My%20Baby%20Don't%20Love%20Me%20No%20More.mp3': GDBus.Errorrg.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)

Aug 5 17:43:14 (2012) tracker-extract[4111]: GLIB MESSAGE Tracker - Setting up monitor for changes to config file:'/home/user/.config/tracker/tracker-extract.cfg'

Aug 5 17:43:14 (2012) tracker-extract[4111]: GLIB MESSAGE Tracker - Loading defaults into GKeyFile...

Aug 5 17:43:14 (2012) tracker-extract[4111]: GLIB CRITICAL ** Tracker - tracker_file_get_size: assertion `path != NULL'failed

Aug 5 17:43:15 (2012) tracker-extract[4111]: GLIB WARNING ** default - Can't set invalid URI '( ' on tagreadbin element discoverer-tag

Aug 5 17:43:15 (2012) tracker-extract[4111]: GLIB WARNING ** Tracker - Call to gupnp_dlna_discoverer_discover_uri_sync() failed: No URI specified to play from.

~ $

Manatus, your solution solved my problem. Thank you so much for being so clear, thorough, and helpful.

I had something like 12 gigs of data, mostly music, and had put off performing the remedy suggested in comment #11, since I'd have to restore data from backup. Today I re-checked this thread, saw this solution, tried it, and rebooted my phone. This time the "Updating library" screen only showed for less than a minute and now I can play all my music again! This will make exercising way more appealing again. :-)

Thanks again, Manatus.

P.S. Weirdly, the problem showed up just after I'd copied a bunch of sort of random files to my N9, like ZIP files and GPS waypoints, but deleting those immediately after noticing the tracker issue seemingly didn't fix it. Instead, once I looked at those error logs, I saw that I had to delete a few OGGs and MP3s that had been in a previous music-copying batch that had not seemed to initially cause any issues. Sorry I don't have time to look into this further & file bugs.

One more detail on the fix, for people who show up a bit later and don't know as much about hacking their N9s: in order to do as Manatus suggests, you have to go into your security settings, turn on Developer Mode, and download the modules that will give you troubleshooting tools like Terminal. Then you run Manatus's commands in Terminal.

suffered from this several days.
now, seems to be fixed by myself.
you guys check && confirm.

Found 200 PIDs…
Found process ID 3447 for 'tracker-miner-fs'
Killed process 3447
Setting database locations
Checking database directories exist
Checking database version
Checking database files exist
Removing all database/storage files
Removing first index file:'/home/user/.cache/tracker/first-index.txt'
Removing last crawl file:'/home/user/.cache/tracker/last-crawl.txt'
Removing database:'/home/user/.cache/tracker/meta.db'
Removing db-locale file:'/home/user/.cache/tracker/db-locale.txt'
/usr/lib/duicontrolpanel $ ps -ef | grep track
2529 user tracker-control -F
3450 user /usr/lib/tracker/tracker-store
3528 user grep track
Starting miners…
✓ Applications
✓ File System
✓ Userguides

please do exactly what I code above.
especially check where tracker-store is stilling running after soft-reset.
kill it !! kill them ALL if more than one exist
(nope, never more than one, I just need to quota "KILL THEM ALL")

for the other term running tracker-control -F, if the tracker-store not been killed, shows


21 Aug 2012, 14:42:54: 0 % File System - Initializing
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:54: 0 % Applications - Initializing
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:54: 0 % Userguides - Initializing
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:54: 1 % Applications - Crawling recursively directory '/usr/local/share/applications'
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:54: 1 % Applications - Crawling recursively directory '/usr/local/share/desktop-directories'
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:54: 1 % Applications - Crawling recursively directory '/usr/share/applications'
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:55: 1 % Applications - Crawling recursively directory '/usr/share/desktop-directories'
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:55: 1 % Applications - Crawling recursively directory '/home/user/.local/share/applications'
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:55: 1 % Applications - Crawling recursively directory '/home/user/.local/share/desktop-directories'
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:55: 1 % Applications - Crawling recursively directory '/usr/lib/duicontrolpanel'
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:56: 28 % Applications - Processing…
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:57: 27 % Applications - Processing…
21 Aug 2012, 14:42:58: 28 % Applications - Processing…
21 Aug 2012, 14:43:02: 27 % Applications - Processing…
21 Aug 2012, 14:43:03: 28 % Applications - Processing…

cheers if it helps.
btw, I'v got pissed by nokia more and more each time.
suffering...

Hey, the site isnt allowing me to send PMs, how do I contact Arie?

Ok guys, my N9 suddenly began acting up last night, first, my messages started disappearing, then my contacts, then my gallery got empty.

When i connect the phone to my laptop, all the data's right there. So im guessing this is a tracker problem. But nothing is helping. Please help me.

Post the output of:

anyone late to the party simply trying to sort their s**t out, DO NOT DO WHAT Kiwi SAID.

what the hell, the -e option ERASES ALL F****** CONTACTS AND MESSAGES.

god damn, it's 4am, i am not in the mood for this sh*t.

I suppose you are better than thedead1440? Yes do it, plus he already warned everybody enough times that this will take away the messages and contacts.