dash - search in the home screen doesn't seem to return any file or folder

[Christian Giordano]

Let me know if the subject is not clear enough.

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

Going to need a little more info here. What where you searching? Did searching in individual places work?

[Bernhard (b.a.koenig)]

This is actually a big thing and I don't understand why it's "incomplete" and "undecided". Or am I the only person who cannot find any files?

[Bernhard (b.a.koenig)]

Imho, it shld work at least as good as the "Search for Files" in the classic gnome menu.

[Alexander Dobetsberger (masternoob)]

i can confirm this bug...

screenshot attached which shows clearly that is doesnt work...

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

Please confirm that unity-place-applications, and unity-place-files are running. You don't have icons for them on your launcher, so either the packages are missing, or the place files have somehow gotten removed. Are you using unity from trunk? If so you need to copy the .place files from /usr/share/unity/places into /usr/local/share/unity/places

[Bernhard (b.a.koenig)]

Then these packages should be installed by default. I think it is not OK if people should install packages just to able to find their own files. As I said above, it should work like the "search for files" of the classical GNOME menu and that one works out of the box.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

They are recommends and so installed by default, did you disable recommends?

[Bernhard (b.a.koenig)]

I'm using an alpha 3 live CD. I'm attaching a screenshot that shows my problem. It cannot find any folders, basically. I didn't disable any recommended packages.

[NoahY (noahy)]

Considering one can't access anything that's not on the sidebar without these two packages, marking them "recommended" seems a bit silly. I don't know why, but I had recommends disabled, so Unity has been all but useless for me until I found this bug.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

I agree with NoahY: given Unity's generally really strong bias against allowing options or customization, it seems bizarre that you have these packages only recommended and that people can so easily end up with them not installed.

[Bernhard (b.a.koenig)]

I think those two unity-place packages are installed by default, at least if you use the final release of natty.

[johanpdx (johanpdx)]

My variation on this problem:

File search (whether from Launcher bar or from Dash) finds SOME files but not nearly ALL.

For example: I have many files with the name Berdy in them. (Columnist for Moscow Times.) The search returns five files (and offers one additional file) when I have dozens. All of these filenames are entitled 100_Berdy-[specific name of article]; all of them are in the same folder.

Searches also return files that don't have the search term either in the title or in the contents--at least the visible contents.

Basically, why does the file searcher work partially but not fully? HOWEVER, the file search utility provided under "accessories" ("стандартные" in the Russian-language version--calculator, text editor, etc.) seems to work fine.

Referring back to Alex Launi's comments, 2011-03-03:

1) unity-place-applications and unity-place-files are installed according to the package manager.

2) "Are you using unity from trunk?" What does that mean? I'm logged in as any ordinary owner/user. "If so you need to copy the .place files from /usr/share/unity/places into /usr/local/share/unity/places"--there is no "unity" folder in /usr/local/share/. Should I make a directory and copy the files?

[Alex Moldovan (alexmoldovan)]

The Dash doesn't seem to find files using letter sequences. See bug#794565.