why is tracker-miner-fs consuming 100% of my CPU? What is /usr/lib/tracker/tracker-miner-fs?

does anyone have a link as to what its sending back to the mothership?

GNOME Tracker is a desktop search application. It does not send anything back to the "mothership", in fact it works entirely offline.

It sounds like you want to thoroughly disable GNOME Tracker without uninstalling it. Here's how to do that in an automated fashion.

1. Kill all current processes.

   killall tracker
   

2. Stop the systemd services.

   systemctl --user stop tracker-{miner-apps,miner-fs,store}
   systemctl --user mask tracker-{miner-apps,miner-fs,store}
   systemctl --user stop tracker-{miner-fs,miner-rss,writeback,xdg-portal,miner-fs-control}-3.service
   systemctl --user mask tracker-{miner-fs,miner-rss,writeback,xdg-portal,miner-fs-control}-3.service
   

3. Turn off tracker-miner-fs via GNOME's gsettings:

   gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files crawling-interval -2
   gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files enable-monitors false
   

   Here's the documentation on crawling-interval:

   Interval in days to check whether the filesystem is up to date in the database. 0 forces crawling anytime, -1 forces it only after unclean shutdowns, and -2 disables it entirely.

4. Prevent tracker from autostarting.

   Set Hidden=true in all of these desktop files:

   • /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-extract.desktop
   • /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-apps.desktop
   • /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop
   • /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-user-guides.desktop
   • /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-store.desktop

   Here's how I script this:

   for f in /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-extract.desktop \
       /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-apps.desktop \
       /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop \
       /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-user-guides.desktop \
       /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-store.desktop
   do
       if grep '^Hidden=true$' "$f" > /dev/null
       then
           : # do nothing
       elif grep '^Hidden=' "$f" > /dev/null
       then
           sudo sed -i -e 's;Hidden=.*;Hidden=true;' "$f"
       else
           printf "\nHidden=true\n" | sudo tee --append "$f"
       fi
   done
   

   If you don't have root privileges or don't want to alter system-level files, use these files instead:

   • ~/.config/autostart/tracker-extract.desktop
   • ~/.config/autostart/tracker-miner-apps.desktop
   • ~/.config/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop
   • ~/.config/autostart/tracker-miner-user-guides.desktop
   • ~/.config/autostart/tracker-store.desktop

   Files with just these contents will do the trick:

   [Desktop Entry]
   Hidden=true
   

5. Delete the tracker database.

   tracker reset --hard
   tracker3 reset -s -r
   

   This isn't actually necessary but will free up some hard drive space.

Related:

• tracker-store and tracker-miner-fs eating up my CPU on every startup
• Ubuntu 20.04.1 tracker-miner errors in Syslog
• How to disable tracker on ubuntu 20.04?
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=747689
• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=241507
• https://old.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/9a0kic/how_do_i_disable_and_remove_gnome_tracker/
• https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/07/how-to-completely-disable-tracker.html