[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: hard drive indexing and realtime searching



On Mon, 2005-02-21 at 07:48 -0800, Steven Anderson wrote:
> Dear Debian Users:
> 
> I wonder wether there is any projects under way to
> give Linux the same type of searching and indexing
> features that are going to be availbable with Windows
> Longhorn and  Mac OS 10.4? I understand that there is
> a db...somthing command that will index the hard drive
> now which i ran across some time ago. Unfortunately it
> did not seem to work when I issued the command
> although it ran somthing all night long. Anyone know
> what command this is since I cant seem to find it
> again. Also anyone know of any indexing projects?

The command that you're probably thinking of is updatedb (which has been
around for years). See the other posts for more info. (Coincidentally
the NT line of Windows has had this since W2K, and possibly earlier.)

What it sounds like you're referring to with the mention of Longhorn and
OS 10.4, however, is some of the meta-data functionality that they're
working on building in. So that a file would not only have a name and a
date associated with it, but user-defined meta-data as well. Then you
could just do a search for all of your "family documents" for example,
and you'd get a listing of all files which match that description,
regardless of the filename and location.

This is essentially what's being worked on for ReiserFS 4. Personally, I
believe that the first fully-usable implementation of this concept that
we'll see will be on a Linux system running ReiserFS 4. M$ and Apple
will come out with their little variations on the theme later. 

(Actually, for all I know this might already be somewhat usable in
Linux. I haven't been keeping up with Reiser4 news recently.)

-- 
Alex Malinovich
Support Free Software, delete your Windows partition TODAY!
Encrypted mail preferred. You can get my public key from any of the
pgp.net keyservers. Key ID: A6D24837

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part


Reply to: