tumblerd, the CPU hogger

TL;DR:

tumblerd hogs up CPU. Internets suggest disabling some file types or uninstalling it. It may just be that it got stuck on an invalid file, so rm file and killall tumblerd may be enough.

Long version:

My Xubuntu laptop had its CPU fan spinning for a while. I decided to do a 'top' to check what was up and found 'tumblerd' hogging up CPU, so I used my Google-fu to figure out what that was and what to do about it.

I found explanations on what it was for (creating thumbnails by file type on XFCE), suggestions to uninstall it and suggestions to restrict which file types it would work on. Here's one on the file type in case this is what you want.

I'm usually not satisfied with losing features to solve problems, and I recently downloaded some photos from my phone and was puzzled that I didn't have any thumbnails for them, so I decided to check what tumblerd was trying (and failing) to do.

I got its PID and dived into /proc/[PID]/fd. There was a descriptor toward a corrupted JPG file I didn't remember about. When I tried to open it, I got some error.

I vaguely remembered trying to download some images and getting them corrupted some time ago. I checked other similar named JPGs and confirmed they were all bad, so I deleted them.

I went back to /proc/[PID]/fd. The descriptor was still there, but the file was mentioned as (deleted). It didn't seem to be going anywhere, so I decided to try my luck with a killall tumblerd.

I went back to the folder with my photos and scrolled up/down. Miracle! I got thumbnails!

The CPU fan also calmed down.

So the moral of this story is: you don't have to cripple XFCE or tumblerd. You can find out what file is messing things up, get rid of it and just killall tumblerd.