On an upgrade from Hardy to Jaunty (via Intrepid) I found out that package apt-xapian-index was not installed.
Installing it solved this problem for me. After installing it, an indexing task started automatically, which progress is shown by issuing: sudo update-apt-xapian-index.
Upon completion of the indexing, the quick search in Synaptic became usable
On an upgrade from Hardy to Jaunty (via Intrepid) I found out that package apt-xapian-index was not installed.
Installing it solved this problem for me. After installing it, an indexing task started automatically, which progress is shown by issuing: sudo update- apt-xapian- index.
Upon completion of the indexing, the quick search in Synaptic became usable