TRACKER3-DAEMON(1)

💖 TRACKER3-DAEMON 💖

okay bestie, so this is the tracker3-daemon page from the Tracker manual — it's the one about starting, stopping, restarting and listing the daemons that do all the indexing. buckle up, it's giving ✨ sysadmin glamour ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

tracker3-daemon — start, stop, restart and list the daemons that are out here indexing your content, no cap 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

tracker3 daemon [options...]
tracker3 daemon -s | -t [daemons] | -k [daemons] | -l
tracker3 daemon -f | -w [ontology]
tracker3 daemon --miner <miner> --pause[-for-process] <reason>
tracker3 daemon --miner <miner> --resume <cookie>

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So Tracker indexes your content using daemon processes that just chill and run in the background, doing their little jobs while you live your life. and the tracker3 daemon command? that's your remote control for all of them. starting, stopping, killing processes, pausing them, resuming them — the whole menu. main character energy fr.

and like, that's not even all of it. there are also ways to follow or watch what's happening in real time — from the top level all the way down to right where the SPARQL commits are actually going down. it's giving backstage pass 🎀

if you pass no arguments at all, this command will just show you the current status of every Tracker data miner. no drama, just receipts.

the data miners can be paused or resumed with this command too, and you can also list which miners are running and which ones are available. iconic.

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -p, --list-processes — lists every single Tracker process in the system. all of them. the full roster 💜
• -k, --kill — this one uses SIGKILL to stop all Tracker processes that match the parameter. if you don't pass an extra parameter, "all" gets assumed. lowkey not advised unless you're already having problems stopping Tracker in the first place, because this one GUARANTEES death. it's the nuclear option, bestie 💀
• -t, --terminate= — this uses SIGTERM to stop all Tracker processes. this is recommended over --kill because it gives the processes time to shut down cleanly. be nice, let them say goodbye 🥺
• -s, --start — starts all miners. wake up babes, we're indexing 🌞
• -f, --follow — follows status changes to daemons as they happen. this is a top level view of what's going on — you'll see the name for each daemon plus a state, with the progress in that state.

this requires Ctrl+C to stop and return to the command line. each new status gets put on a new line. very live, very now.

• -w, --watch=[ontology] — watches changes that happen to the database in real time. this also requires Ctrl+C to stop and get you back to the command line.

if ontology isn't specified, all updates get shown. the ontology can be a comma separated list of shorthand or long hand ontology properties. for example:

$ tracker3 daemon -w nie:url,nie:mimeType,nfo:fileSize,nie:dataSource
Now listening for resource updates to the database
All nie:plainTextContent properties are omitted

Press Ctrl+C to stop

'nfo:Document'
   'nfo:fileSize' = '1770'
   'nie:dataSource' = 'http://tracker.api.gnome.org/ontology/v3/tracker#extractor-data-source'
   'nie:mimeType' = 'text/plain'
   'nie:url' = 'file:///home/martyn/.bash_aliases'
'nfo:Document'
   'nie:dataSource' = 'http://tracker.api.gnome.org/ontology/v3/tracker#extractor-data-source'

...

• --list-common-statuses — lists the statuses most commonly produced by miners and the store. heads up: these statuses are not translated when they get sent over D-Bus, so each application has to translate them itself. also they are not considered static and are subject to change at any point. ⚠️

and additionally — these aren't the only statuses that may be reported by a miner. there may be other states tied to the specific roles of the miner in question, iykyk.

• --list-miners-running — lists all miners which have responded to a D-Bus call. sometimes it's helpful to use this command together with --list-miners-available. dream team 🫶
• --list-miners-available — lists all miners which are available, even the ones that aren't running at the moment. they're not ignoring you, they're just resting 🦋
• --pause-details — for listing all miners which are paused and the reasons they're paused, use this. it will also show you the application that requested the pause too. full context, no mystery 💅
• --miner=<miner> — this argument is used with --pause or --resume to say which miner you wanna pause or resume. you can use the full D-Bus name, e.g. "org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files" OR you can just use the suffix, e.g. "Files". we love a flexible queen ✨
• --pause=<reason> — the reason here is useful so you know WHY the miner should be paused. a miner can be paused many times by multiple applications — only when all the pauses have been resumed will it continue. if it succeeds, a cookie will be given to uniquely identify the request, and that cookie is what you use to resume the pause later on. 🍪
• --pause-for-process=<reason> — works exactly the same way as --pause, except it only keeps the pause active while the calling process is alive. the second you press Ctrl+C, the pause gets resumed automatically. ghosting the miner, but make it clean 😭
• --resume=<cookie> — the cookie is given by a successful --pause command. it's a number that identifies each pause request. when all the pauses have been resumed, the miner will resume working. and that's the whole arc 🌈

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate that. this was tracker3-daemon from the Tracker manual, version 3.7.1, dated 02/03/2026. go forth and index responsibly. periodt 💖✨🎀