Add locations to GNOME Search file index

Question

I have a SSD for my root partition and use a HDD under /data/ and use system links in my home directory for file heavy directories such as:

/data/home/user/Documents > linked to /home/user/Documents
/data/home/user/Downloads > linked to /home/user/Downloads
etc.

In Ubuntu 17.10, GNOME does not follow these system links when indexing files for GNOME Search. It only seems to index files/dirs which are located below /home/user/.

Screenshot:

I'm trying to figure out how to index files in other directories, so they show up in GNOME Search. I would assume I would be able to add custom directories within the search settings. I've also been looking around in dconf but cannot find anything.

Solution 1

This should help you:

gsettings get org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files index-recursive-directories
gsettings get org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files index-single-directories

On GUI you can edit them with dconf-editor.

Did you try activating this?

gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker.Miner.Files index-removable-devices true

Solution 2

Heh, actually the configuration wizard does exist, but by default it's not installed by Ubuntu (as of 17.10). You have to install "tracker" and maybe a couple other applets (?), look for it in synaptic.

Comments

[Admin]

Did you find a solution? I have just installed ubuntu 18.04 and this seems like a really bad implementation

[slow_learner]

I installed the tracker-miner-fs package, and it pulled in everything I needed.

[verpfeilt]

sudo apt install tracker also fixed this for me on Ubuntu 18.04 (tracker-miner-fs is a depencency and was installed as well).