Searching for Files

UNIX System

On the top panel just to the left of the logout button is an icon to start the graphical search tool.

By default the tool is trying to use a quick search method which relies on a locate database file. This file does nto exist so before you can use the graphical tool you need to disable the quick search option. To do this you need to run the command

gconftool-2 --type=bool --set /apps/gnome-search-tool/disable_quick_search 1

in a terminal window. This setting is then saved so you never need to do this again.

Having done this start the search tool from the top panel and type in a file name or partial name for it to look for and press find. It will then search through your entire home directory looking for files with matching names. Note this may take some time if you have a lot of files! Once it gives you the list of matching files you can the see where the file is located in your account from the path it provides.

All the graphical tool is really doing is using the command line tools find and grep. You could just as easily run these from the command line yourself, e.g. suppose I want to find a file called test.txt then I could start a terminal window and first run

cd

to make sure I'm in my home directory and then run

find . -name test.txt

For a more complicated search I could look for all files that begin with the name test with

find . -name "test*"

If you want the search to be case insensitive replace the option -name with -iname.

For more information on the graphical tool click the help button within it. For more information on find see the manual page (i.e. run man find)

Windows System

From the Start button at the bottom left choose the Search option to start the graphical search tool.