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zhMFe3
n00b
Joined: 24 Jan 2014
Posts: 11
Location: Germany
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 Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 1:01 pm Post subject: nepomuk tags completely gone after KDE update |
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Hi,
I don't really know why it happened so it's difficult to reproduce, maybe some of you can help to reconstruct the details. Consider it a (helpful) discussion.
I decided to give the tagging of files a chance and started with my image library.
about 8 days ago I did a @world update which involved many KDE package updates (to version 4.14.3) and somehow nepomuk was completely gone afterwards. I might have done a --depclean after the update, but I am not sure, because: while doing the update i noticed that not all packages in kde-base/ were in fact updated so the whole process was a bit fiddly. And secondly I don't just nod through the removal of important packages. I must have been even more tired than usual if i did that. There was also a kernel update and some sd card kernel module fiddling as well. So, basically unrelated
However I did not change my USE flags. But i noticed that there is a nepomuk flag which wasn't set. So my question is: is it a new thing? Did I miss an anouncement about "nepomuk" now being optional?
But still, even if i unmerged nepomuk.... Why did all of my tags dissappear? If removing nepomuk and then reemerging it removes all of your tags, then i cannot even begin to describe how unreliable tagging is and how much i would consider it a waste of time.
Just imagine that your home directory structure was lost during an update and all of your files were just placed directly in $HOME. I sincerely hope that this was all very unlikely and somehow my fault, because of all the features one reads about when it comes to baloo, nepomuk, strigi and stuff it's searching for pdf contents and tagging that i find useful, so i would like to give it another go.
Oh and will there one day be a baloo USE flag which removes all of my tags again? Has anyone experienced something similar? All i can find is how people want to get rid of nepomuk on their systems and the indexer overheating the machine... so I'm not sure who even uses these features |
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davidm
Guru
Joined: 26 Apr 2009
Posts: 557
Location: US
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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Hi zhMFe3. I can't say for sure what happened in your specific situation but I know that nepomuk is being replaced with baloo and baloo still has tagging. The thing is though in 2014 sometime it switched over to using the xattr data to store the tags and user ratings as opposed to using a separate database. Early on for a while it was using the xattr+the separate database but upstream decide to drop support for the separate database and now only xattr is used to store the tags.
One way to check which xattr data is on a file is like so:
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$ getfattr -d testfile
# file: testfile
user.baloo.rating="10"
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Because of this you have to be careful now when moving around files to be sure the xattr data will be moved as well. In fact I recently ran into this and had to file a bug as I found Dolphin didn't transfer my tags and ratings across btrfs subvolumes as it should:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=342152
Also I think a database is still kept merely to keep track of which files have tags or such (but the tags themselves are stored in xattr). So if you just upgraded it might be possible that baloo-file has to scan your files again or possibly do some sort of conversion.
I hope this helps at least give you some more things to look into. Btw I am a heavy tag and rating user too. There are definitely some of us out there who use this stuff.  |
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zhMFe3
n00b
Joined: 24 Jan 2014
Posts: 11
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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Oh, I missed more than I thought. I have baloo and nepomuk both (simultaneously). But, before i set the nepomuk USE flag, I had no support for tags at all... weird. I will check back after doing some more reading. I just must have missed a transition guide....
returns nothing at all on previously tagged files (before tags were lost) and a
| Code: | | user.xdg.tags="tag1,tag2" |
line on recently tagged files. |
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davidm
Guru
Joined: 26 Apr 2009
Posts: 557
Location: US
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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| zhMFe3 wrote: | Oh, I missed more than I thought. I have baloo and nepomuk both (simultaneously). But, before i set the nepomuk USE flag, I had no support for tags at all... weird. I will check back after doing some more reading. I just must have missed a transition guide....
returns nothing at all on previously tagged files (before tags were lost) and a
| Code: | | user.xdg.tags="tag1,tag2" |
line on recently tagged files. |
I just recently re-installed Gentoo again coming from Arch and the first KDE I installed from Gentoo had 4.14.3 so unfortunately I can't help much with the transition. 
I believe there might be a database stored somewhere in ~/.kde4 or ~/.config though. With any luck you might find it and be able to transition there to get back your tags since they aren't in the xattr data apparently.
I see a use flag "semantic-desktop" and always figured that was the one for it but I am not sure. Also note there is a "balooctl" program which allows for options like "balooctl status" and "balooctl enable" however I doubt that will help with recovering the tags if they aren't stored in the xattr of the files. Hopefully you do find a transition guide or such and it is just in some database somewhere. |
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davidm
Guru
Joined: 26 Apr 2009
Posts: 557
Location: US
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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I think I found a guide for it which might be of some help:
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=154&t=120047
Apparently there is a nepomukbaloomigrator tool which handles the conversion. There is a mini FAQ and considerable discussion on that thread. Good luck. |
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