Newby ? How to use Search

[Tod Merley]

On 9/21/06, mtyoung <tuxman at knology.net> wrote:
> I installed Beagle using "apt-get install beagle".
>
> Then when I tested the search again I tried different terms, and this
> time I've learned that apparently it will only find items in my username
> directory.
>
> Is this the way it's supposed to work, or am I missing something?
>
> Remember I'm a Linux newby, with no Unix experience, and about eight
> hours total including the install from livecd.
>
>
> Peter Garrett wrote:
> > On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 10:08:33 -0500
> > mtyoung <tuxman at knology.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> I'm researching Beagle now. The info is bit conflicted. Some hints that
> >> it's included in the latest Gnome desktop as part of Ubuntu, and other
> >> info says that Nautilus will use Beagle if it's installed.
> >> Anyone have a definitive answer?
> >>
> >
> > This isn't definitive, but I have a fresh Dapper install here and just
> > tried the Nautilus search function...
> >
> > I searched on a plainly visible directory "irclogs" ( just that search
> > term). Nautilus proceeded to take *more than a minute* to find it.... :(
> >
> > Beagle is not installed.
> >
> > So, maybe it is working, but taking forever.... nautilus was using between
> > 50 and 70% CPU for all that time. Can't say I was impressed - I'm used to
> > using "locate" "grep" and "find" from the command line, and this strikes me
> > as absurd...
> >
> > I had beagle installed on a previous system, and it certainly was *much*
> > quicker. I personally found it superfluous, but I can see that having it
> > is preferable if you want quick search results in the GUI.
> >
> > Peter
> >
> >
>
> --
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>

Hi mtyoung!

I have never used the search feature in Nautils (the file browser).
If I want to find files I even bypass Places > Search for files and go
directly to a terminal and to "locate".  Locate will look at almost
all of your HD and find any text you enter (like with the letters "ui"
for example.

You do need to run an "sudo updatedb" before you run locate (it
creates an up to date database of the files).  Also locate skips over
things mounted in /media and a few other palces but you can change
that if you wish.

Some searches give very long results.  You can do a "locate blahblah >
locateblahblah.txt" and then a "less locateblahblah.txt" to look at
the results a bit a a time.  You can also use "grep" to see only some
of the results.  Example:
-------------------------------------------------
tod at tod-desktop:~$ locate ifconfig
/sbin/ifconfig
/usr/share/man/man8/ifconfig.8.gz
tod at tod-desktop:~$ locate ifconfig | grep bin
/sbin/ifconfig
tod at tod-desktop:~$
------------------------------------------------
Anymore I am so spoiled by this the GUI's hold little interest for me.

Grep, BTW is useful to find those files which include "blahblah" text.
  For example I wanted to find which files in my /etc/init.d directory
contained "dbus". So:
-----------------------------------------------
tod at tod-desktop:/etc/init.d$ grep "dbus" *
dbus:# Provides:          dbus
dbus:DAEMON=/usr/bin/dbus-daemon
dbus:NAME=dbus
dbus:PIDDIR=/var/run/dbus
dbus:EVENTDIR=/etc/dbus-1/event.d
dbus:if [ -e /etc/default/dbus ]; then
dbus:  . /etc/default/dbus
dbus:  dbus-send --print-reply --system --type=method_call \
dbus:  # hopefully this is enough time for dbus to reload it's config file.
pcmcia:cardbus_bridge_present()
pcmcia:             if cardbus_bridge_present; then
pcmciautils:cardbus_bridge_present()
pcmciautils:                if ! cardbus_bridge_present; then
tod at tod-desktop:/etc/init.d$
-----------------------------------------------
Note that the text within the files I wanted to search for is in
quotes, and that I used a "*" wild card symbol to search all files in
my current directory which was /etc/init.d.

Have fun!

Tod