Krunner - not reliable when searching files

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1

I’ve only been using KDE for a couple of months and read high praise for Krunner as a search tool, but yet to be convinced by this.

For starters I see Dolpfin has a ‘search’ facility under menu tab ‘Edit’. But so far I’ve failed to find one file using that. ‘No files matching search’ is the usual response even when there are relevant named data files within the path of the opened folder.

As for a direct Krunner search (Alt+Spacebar), that’s a bit more succesful when searching for a file, but it doesn’t find them all. Eg, when using the 'locate ’ command for files with name of ‘Audacity’ included within, 9 files (correct number) are listed, whereas Krunner finds 8 files. The missing file is on a slightly different path to the other 8.

I installed Catfish, an Xfce file search tool which I found also works well with KDE. And as with the ‘locate’ command it finds all the files.

So I’m not stumped when it comes to doing a file search that I know is reliable. However, I don’t know why Dolphin’s search tool never seems to work, nor why Krunner does not produce reliable results.

2

I do not have Locations, Places, or File Search enabled for kickoff/krunner, but using dolphins search I could not reproduce.

Until I searched for files contained in a hidden folder from a different path … then it seemed to not be able to find those files.

I also do not have baloo/indexer running.

I might mention though that for really searching I would probably use kfind which will also have a button to open it from dolphin if you click the search icon.

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3

I don’t search for files all that often, so I ran a couple of simple test searches in Dolphin and KRunner. I was a little surprised to see that they failed in multiple interesting ways:

  • Dolphin was unable to find a file that was clearly present.
  • KRunner presented files that were deleted in the distant past.
  • KRunner classified image files as spreadsheets.

But things appear to have returned to normal after clearing baloo’s index.

balooctl6 suspend
balooctl6 purge
balooctl6 resume
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4

Hi @bendipa1,

You can specify what Krunnet, etc. should search. To do so, go to System Settings → Workspace → Search → Plasma Search:

https://i.imgur.com/2fHDtXF.png

Otherwise, for just plain searching, there’s always KFind:

https://i.imgur.com/QiWlFcw.png

5

Most search tools will be using an index stored in a database and will be using that index to search.

If the index is not up-to-date - the result(s) will come up empty or incomplete.

The solution is to update the index.

Some CLI tools e.g. grep -r and find will traverse a physical path during search.

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