Picture and video thumbnails not appearing after installing Mint 21

[Texmex]

Hello.

Here's my issue - I did a full, fresh install of Linux Mint 21.1 Xfce. PRIOR to this I've tried to just do an upgrade, but I noticed that my thumbnails were broken afterwards. I assumed this was for this or that reason and just opted to format the disk and do a full, fresh install. My assumption was that something cryptic went wrong and that it won't be an issue. This was not the case, because I still don't get thumbnails on my pics and videos. Specifically in one folder the thumbnails begin to generate, reach a certain point and then the system just gives up and stops. In another folder, nothing at all happens. In the third case, a single folder with pictures loaded thumbnails fully but in none of the others. Please note than in both cases the files are perfectly accessible, it's just that the thumbnail function appears broken in some way. While I've been using Linux for a while I'm the quintessential end user and have no idea what could be wrong. I stress that the installation is new. The system is working fine after it stopped generating thumbnails in the previously mentioned scenario, it didn't freeze or anything. All the pictures are your usual jpg, gif, png formats and all the videos are in this case webm and mp4 files.

Please advise.

[marts123]

I had similar issues a year or so back.
This page helped:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1043976 ... untu-18-04

In particular:

Code: Select all

$ killall thunar
$ sudo apt install tumbler tumbler-plugins-extra ffmpegthumbnailer 
$ thunar -q

This worked for me, however I made a note to myself at the time, saying if it didnt work try spelling Thunar with an uppercase T.
Maybe it didnt work with a lower case T, I cant remember, but no harm was done.

[Texmex]

Thanks for the suggestion - but it didn't work. In fact, this is now beyond a problem and is mildly amusing. Pix is one of the two image viewing programs that comes bundled with the system and my preferred app for that. It can also open various media files, probably all the usual formats. By sheer accident I discovered that if I use Pix to browse the folders and use its thumbnail bar function it generates thumbnails that are then "inherited" by the system as a whole. However, it gets even stranger. Upon accidentally discovering that I tried a few simple experiments. In some cases thunar would do what it's supposed to do and generate thumbnails even in massive pic/video folders. In others it would start, get to a certain point, and again just give up. This is all AFTER I discovered that Pix can generate thumbs. In the same instance, without rebooting the system or killing any processes, the thumbnailer inherent to the system does whatever it wants or does not want to do. Size of the folders, media files/pics doesn't seem to have anything to do with that. It generated thumbs for a 200+ mkv hi res folder but didn't even bother with a 100+ 480p mkv files folder.

In essence, after using Pix and its function the system will inherit the thumbnails it generated, and after closing the app the system will for a while generate thumbnails according to its own arcane preferences and when it feels like it. I've never encountered this issue in any capacity on any OS. As a total end user my only assumption is that this is specifically related to the thumbnailer as such, but given that it's fresh out of the box this might be an inherent issue that needs fixing and reinstalling it won't do anything. In any case I'm open for suggestions, but will need someone to hold my hand since my only knowledge of Terminal use is accidental.