GNU/Linux Desktop Search Using Beagle
15 October 2007Beagle is a program for searching your data which includes documents, images, music, video, and much other stuff which you need to. For a complete list of supported files, look here.
Let’s install Beagle on Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake.
Open System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager and search for beagle. Select beagle and also other packages that get installed with it.
Press Apply
It’ll take some time which depends on your download speed, after which it gets installed.
Once it gets installed, there are a couple of things you need to know before you can start searching.
First, you need to start the Beagle daemon.
You can start it by running
Once the daemon gets started, it starts indexing your HOME directory. It will take some time to index all your files.
You can start searching by running the following command
This will present a window, where you can enter the text pattern of the documents you want to search.
You can start typing in the Find TextBox and the matched files will be displayed in the window.
By default only your HOME directory is indexed. If you wish to include additional directories or exclude certain paths, you can do so by selecting Search -> Preferences -> Indexing
Let’s say you would like to add the directory /usr/src to the list of indexed directories.
Press the Add button from General Tab in the Search Preferences dialog box.
Then select the /usr/src directory by browsing the filesystem.
The path will be shown under “Add any additional paths to be included for indexing”. Once you press OK, this directory will also be indexed.
You will also find the Quick Tips helpful while searching for files. They are displayed once you start the beagle-search. They can also be accessed by selecting Help -> Quick Tips
Happy beagling.
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