Bug#1029288: please build tracker-miners with fanotify support

[Roderich Schupp]

Source: tracker-miners
Version: 3.4.3-1
Severity: wishlist
X-Debbugs-Cc: roderich.schupp at gmail.com

Recently I noticed that tracker-miner-fs uses its inotify backend

Jan 20 17:07:10 nuc8 tracker-miner-f[306583]: Monitor backend is Inotify

whereas I expected it to use the newer, more efficient fanotify backend
(running on a 6.1.x Linux kernel). The build log for the running version
(https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=tracker-
miners&arch=amd64&ver=3.4.3-1&stamp=1674159607&raw=0) shows:

Checking if "fanotify works without additional capabilities" runs: NO (1)

The reason seems to be this check: https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/tracker-
miners/-/blob/debian/master/meson.build#L179

According to fanotify_init(2), fanotify may be used without the CAP_SYS_ADMIN
capability (with reduced functionality) since kernel 5.13, but apparently the
build host (x86-conova-01.debian.org) was running an older kernel.

If I read https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/tracker-
miners/-/blob/debian/master/src/libtracker-miner/tracker-monitor.c#L379
correctly, tracker-miner-fs will simply fall back to the inotify backend
when initializing the fanotify backend fails (e.g. due to missing CAP_SYS_ADMIN
when running on older kernels).

Cheers, Roderich




-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.2.0-rc4 (SMP w/8 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)