Sometimes my phone starts to use the processor alot and when I check Conky the process " hildon thumbnail " is eating it all up. Can I kill it somehow and why is it there? Loading thumbnails even though I haven't opened the picture app?

You should find who is asking hildon-thumbnail to work.

You can run dbus-monitor in a console and check who is asking new thumbnails. Check if you find a D-Bus message like this:

method call sender=:1.106 -> dest=org.freedesktop.thumbnailer serial=14 path=/org/freedesktop/thumbnailer/Generic; interface=org.freedesktop.thumbnailer.Generic; member=Queue

If so, you know that ":1.106" is asking the thumbnail. You can find the pid of ":1.106" with the following command:

dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.GetConnectionUnixProcessID string::1.106

Maybe there is not a lot of thumbnail requests but only one thumbnail request which is stuck using 100% of CPU? You can check with the command "ls -l /proc/1442/fd" where 1442 is the pid of hildon-thumbnailerd. If the same photo is open for a long time, it may be a problem.

In any case, killing it should not be a problem (except that the thumbnails currently created will fail of course): it is restarted automatically (by D-Bus activation, see /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.thumbnailer.service) when a process request a new thumbnail.

Thanks for the help, I'll try that!

The problem is, hildon-thumbnailerd eats 100% cpu when anythint is mounted... if i have mounted my ext2-sdcard to /mmc or my pc mounted via sshfs to /home/user/mydocs/mnt, after a few minutes the hildon-thumbnailerd goes crazy.
Should i create a bugreport?

I've got the same problem. This happens sometimes after booting. I have a lot of pictures on my phone and when this happens all the thumbnails are suddenly gone and therefore recreated. If I turn off the device and turn it on again, everything is fine and all the thumbnails are back to normal. Anyone found a solution to this bug yet (a bug report has been filed already)?

install htop
(one time only) adjust the columns display to the N900's screen

• open XTerminal &
  
  Code:

  root
  htop

• tape F5 to view process tree
• tap on F2 / Setup
• tap on Columns and in the 2nd / central column remove all but
  • PID
  • STATE
  • PERCENT_CPU
  • PERCENT_MEM
  • Command
• • in the 2nd column select STATE
  • from the 3rd column add PPID
• tap F10 to quit SETUP & F10 again to quit htop

whenever CPU seems overly busy...

• open XTerminal &
  
  Code:

  root
  htop

• N.B.: do NOT kill process with PID 1 (!)
• select hildon-thumbnail process
• hit F9 / KILL
• confirm with enter
• F10 to quit htop

if the PID with high CPU use (CPU%) is not hildon-thumbnail exercise judgment before killing it (!)
removing the battery will still stop your N900 but nonetheless...
as usual, use at your own risk

EDIT: the term-app-laucher which gets used by HTOP has (very) limited colours & does not support adjust font size with volume rocker => use XTerminal

Try checking trackerd perhaps?
It indexes pictures, music, & videos in N900.
By default, it does that to many locations under MyDocs & the whole SDcard.

The config file is: /home/user/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg

There's an app that lets you tweak trackerd as well.

kh

tried to tweak /home/user/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg like
to no avail - starting after 5 min (300") the whole phone became so sluggish that it bordered unusable...

put pretty much everything to false
works just fine ¦-)))))

1. Don't use low memory mode FFS. Let trackerd finish what it is doing ASAP.

2. Rebuild tracker database, thumbnailerd is getting stuck on something.

If you want to get fancy use IONICE or something.