GNOME Search Tool Manual
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# Quick find mode

This section describes quick find mode of `GNOME search tool`. To use this mode, switch to `Quick find (locate)` window, shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Quick find window

In the quick search mode, `GNOME Search tool` doesn not actually search for a file on the disk — instead, it uses a special database containing the names of all the files on the system. It makes search much faster. However, it also means that the only type of search you can do is by filename. Moreover, this search will not find files which were added after the last database update (on most systems, it is updated daily, usually at night — see below for more info).

To find a file using the quick search mode, just enter a substring of the file name in the `Locate file` field. For example, to find all the files whose filenames contain the string "searchtool", enter `searchtool` in this field. This will also show all the files that contain the string "searchtool" in their full pathname — in particular, all the files in `/usr/share/help/gsearchtool`.

To restrict search to a subdirectory, you can use the directory name in combination with the wildcards. For example, to do quick search for all files with extension `txt` in the directory `/home/user`, enter `/home/user/*.txt` in the `Locate file` field.

The quick search mode is actually a front-end to locate command, so if you need more detailed information, read the appropriate manual page.

## The locate database

This section discusses updating the database used for quick search. Unless you are a system administrator or just curious, you do not need to read it.

On most systems, the database used for locate command (and thus, for quick search mode of `GNOME Search tool`), is updated daily, usually at nights. This is done as a cron job — see the manual page for cron if you are unfamiliar with this utility. Note that if your computer is usually turned off at night time, the database doesn't get updated. In this case, you should change the default update time by either manully editing `/etc/crontab` or using a graphical tool such as `cromagnon`. This requires system administrator (root) privileges.

You can also issue the command "Update database now" by running the command updatedb. Again, this requires system administrator (root) privileges. Without any options, it rebuilds the whole database, for all the files on your system. It also has many command line options allowing you to fine-tune it (for example, istructing it to skip certain directories). For more information, read the manual page for updatedb.

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