My global desktop search (the thing when I hit the Super key and start typing) can’t seem to find files (other than those in ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel). My workaround is to search from the Files/Nautilus app itself using “Search Current Folder” – that shows me all results I expect.
“Search Everywhere” in the Files app never returns anything, not even entries in ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel. It instantly returns “No results found”.
tracker3 search readme.md has tons of matches, but all these are full text search matches, none are filenames.
I think there are plenty of, e.g. Readme.md files in tracker3’s index, but none are returned. I don’t know the architecture of all this, I’m guessing based on tracker3 info ~/git/meonkeys/ow/Readme.md returning a lot of lines (file:/// and urn:fileid entries), so I assume that means that some necessary stuff is in the index? Also du -hs ~/.cache/tracker3/ returns 663M, for what that’s worth.
When I initiate a desktop search for readme.md, it looks like it is trying to fetch search results from Files/Nautilus:
$ journalctl --user --grep 'nautilus|files' -f
Dec 13 14:05:16 pickle dbus-daemon[11330]: [session uid=1000 pid=11330] Activating service name='org.gnome.Nautilus' requested by ':1.41' (uid=1000 pid=11798 comm="/usr/bin/gnome-shell" label="unconfined")
Dec 13 14:05:16 pickle nautilus[220076]: Connecting to org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files
Dec 13 14:05:16 pickle dbus-daemon[11330]: [session uid=1000 pid=11330] Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.Nautilus'
I also tried this tool but it doesn’t seem to reveal anything new (and returns no results):
$ ./gnome-search-cli.py --provider org.gnome.Nautilus --debug readme.md
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/org.gnome.Calculator-search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/org.gnome.Calendar.search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/seahorse-search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/gnome-terminal-search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/org.gnome.Nautilus.search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/org.gnome.clocks.search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/org.gnome.Contacts.search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/org.gnome.Settings.search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/org.gnome.Software-search-provider.ini
DEBUG:root:Reading /usr/share/gnome-shell/search-providers/org.gnome.Characters.search-provider.ini
INFO:root:Searching Search provider org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop
DEBUG:root:org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop: Calling GetInitialResultSet()
I’m using gnome shell 46.0 (came with 64-bit ubuntu 24.04 LTS desktop). Tracker is version 3.7.1.
~/.config/user-dirs.dirs contains:
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run.
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/"
I should also note I have another machine with the same software and files (and settings, as far as I can tell) where global / desktop / Search Everywhere does work just like I’d expect. I’m probably missing some small config/software difference though, I just haven’t spotted it.
