On Dec 23, 2007 4:57 AM, Alain Muls <<a href="mailto:alain.muls@telenet.be">alain.muls@telenet.be</a>> wrote: <div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> I tried google-desktop, beagle, tracker to perform search on my local hard disk the way it does on my son's iMAC. But all in vain. None of these search engines was able to index my latex files, pdf files and thunderbird mails. How can I tune one of them so that these items get indexed? </blockquote></div> I only know about google desktop. Here is what I have done to improve the defaults, which sounds like it would help you, too. Go into Google Desktop Preferences. It should be in your menu if you are installing from the Google apt repository. I went and added my /home/user/.mozilla folder (yours may be different, I think Ubuntu may use .mozilla-thunderbird), on the theory that it is a hidden folder and I am not sure how it finds your email directory. Very importantly, under the Display section, make sure that the search box defaults to your local files - my default was the web. -- John DeCarlo, My Views Are My Own