tracker-extract crashed with SIGSEGV in gst_video_info_to_caps()

StacktraceTop:
 gst_video_info_to_caps (info=0xadaf4bdc) at video-info.c:509
 gst_ffmpegviddec_ensure_internal_pool (picture=0x8c15b20, ffmpegdec=0x8a4e520) at gstavviddec.c:719
 gst_ffmpegviddec_get_buffer2 (context=0x8c1a420, picture=0x8c15b20, flags=0) at gstavviddec.c:801
 get_buffer_internal (flags=0, frame=0x8c15b20, avctx=0x8c1a420) at /build/ffmpeg-1x9OvV/ffmpeg-2.7.2/libavcodec/utils.c:1026
 ff_get_buffer (avctx=0x8c1a420, frame=0x8c15b20, flags=0) at /build/ffmpeg-1x9OvV/ffmpeg-2.7.2/libavcodec/utils.c:1039

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Still there in 16.10 Beta (Yaketty Yak)

Still there in 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerex)

Still there for me too in 16.10 Official Release (Yaketty Yak)

+10 users affected here (16.04 LTS)

Me too. And had an update on relevant security packages (16.04 LTS upgrade from 14.04 TLS)

I've had this start-up crash since upgrading to 16.04 LTS. Finally purged tracker-extract and this seems not to cause problems. Indexer already crashed on start-up every time so file search was useless anyway (find/grep in a terminal has always been reliable).

Can't purge tracker because of the dependencies (gnome-desktop) but taking out tracker-extract seems OK.

Also happening in 17.04. Started happening after a fsck repair following a power failure. Could be related to lost/corrupt files.

Running tracker-extract manually on file shown in syslog gives the following.

roger@dragon:~/Documents/Old Stuff/Camtasia Studio$ tracker extract --verbosity=detailed visualimpact.avi
Tracker-Message: Starting tracker-extract 1.12.0
Tracker-Message: General options:
Tracker-Message: Verbosity ............................ 2
Tracker-Message: Sched Idle ........................... 1
Tracker-Message: Max bytes (per file) ................. 1048576
Setting priority nice level to 19
Loading extractor rules... (/usr/share/tracker/extract-rules)
Extractor rules loaded
MIME type guessed as 'video/x-msvideo' (from GIO)
gst_video_info_set_format: assertion 'format != GST_VIDEO_FORMAT_UNKNOWN' failed
gst_video_info_to_caps: assertion 'info->finfo->format != GST_VIDEO_FORMAT_UNKNOWN' failed

(tracker-extract:5311): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: gst_mini_object_unref: assertion 'mini_object != NULL' failed
Call to gst_discoverer_discover_uri(file:///home/roger/Documents/Old%20Stuff/Camtasia%20Studio/visualimpact.avi) failed: Unable to allocate memory
file:///home/roger/Documents/Old%20Stuff/Camtasia%20Studio/visualimpact.avi: No metadata or extractor modules found to handle this file

There is an interesting comment in the man page for tracker-extract.

"The actual extraction is done by a separate process. This is done to isolate the calling process from any memory leaks or crashes in the libraries Tracker uses to extract metadata."

My workaround for ubuntu setups. Is to put a file called .trackerignore in any directories that contain avi files. The default configuration for tracker appears to set this.

gsettings get org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files ignored-directories-with-content
['.git', '.trackerignore']

The bug itself needs to be (re)raised with gnome.

I have raised this on Gnome Bugzilla. Bug number #787645.

Looks like this bug should be reported on Gitlab rather than Gnome Bugzilla. There are several tracker subprojects on Gitlab. I'm guessing this bug should be reported on one of:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/tracker-miners
or,
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/tracker