unity dash loses ability to search for applications

[Jacob Cram]

Every so often, about once a day (I haven't identified a trigger for this behaviour), the unity dash loses the ability to search for applications. I can open the dash and type, say "firefox" and nothing shows up. Rebooting does not seem to fix the problem. However if I type, as recommended here <http://askubuntu.com/questions/125843/dash-search-gives-no-result> (note this is a slightly different bug, I can still search for files and the like):
rm ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite
unity --reset &

Unity restarts and searches for things normally. Somewhat to my annoyance a lot of settings get lost, for instance the custom sizing of my launcher icons. Fortunately, I can keep working, but I'd like this problem to go away if possible.

I am running Ubuntu 12.04
Kernel 3.2.0-58-generic

I am running the kernel released by siddhu in this bug report https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1093217 because it fixes a problem where the computer hangs while booting.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1318863/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

Do you have Online Search disabled? (System Settings > Security & Privacy > Search) If so then this is likely a dup of bug #1320539 (Dash search of applications is randomly disabled when online searchs have been turned off).