Zeitgeist daemon purpose and large sql data files

During the course of crafting an excludes file for my home directory backup software, I noticed some large files in .local/share/zeitgeist/

Found this blog post about how to kill the daemon and remove the data files.

According to another blog post I found, Zeitgeist daemon has been around for at least 10 years.

According to this blurb “zeitgeist-daemon is a daemon which keeps track of activities on your system (file usage, browser history, calendar events, etc.) and logs them into a central database. It does not only create a chronologic register, but also supports tagging and can establish relationships between activities.”

It’s concerning to me that this daemon is shoulder surfing and spying and logging desktop actions.

Anyone else noticed this before and taken steps to remediate?

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I suspect that those deleted files will grow large again since they log activity. If you don’t like it keeping track of that stuff, why not disable or even uninstall it?

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I very well may end up doing just that.

Point is, I was never aware of the existence of the mysterious Zeitgeist daemon until today. Before disabling or removing something I first try to understand a little of its history and purpose.

Seems odd that a privacy distro like PureOS would have something like this enabled by default.

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Local history is different from cloud history offered by third-parties.

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Discovered that the GNOME Activity Journal can be installed to view and configure which events are logged by Zeitgeist.

sudo apt install -y gnome-activity-journal

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It does not appear to be installed on my Librem 5, so probably it is not installed by default in that environment.

That then raises the question as to whether it was installed by default in your environment or whether something that you installed pulled it in i.e. as a dependency, in which case it could be a problem to uninstall it. If you have a Live Boot USB handy, you might want to see whether it is installed by default.

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Good data point and good idea. I had a copy of PureOS Crimson installed in a Gnome Boxes VM previously, I’ll see if I can reproduce the issue there.

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Did a fresh install of PureOS 11 Crimson in a VM. No zeitgeist service. Maybe it was leftover from the PureOS 10 Byzantium that I upgraded from?

I removed zeitgeist using sudo apt uninstall zeitgeist and these were the other packages that were removed.

gnome-activity-journal python3-zeitgeist zeitgeist

So I have no idea how zeitgeist made it onto my system at this point. I’m guessing most people should be able to remove it from their system without issue.

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Depending on how much effort you want to spend on this, a byzantium Live Boot USB is probably what should be checked (or do it in a VM if you prefer).

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Random anecdote, my Librem 5 and LIbrem 14 are running Byznatium, but do not appear to have a .local/share/zeitgeist folder. I do not have any recollection of intentionally removing this package, nor do I recall hearing its name.

Maybe zeitgeist was a dependency for something that you installed in the past?

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Thanks for that info on Byzantium. I agree, it must have been a dependency of something that I installed earlier, and then later removed.

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