Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

[Tim036]

I know they are on the hard disc somewhere and are xls extension.

All the 'Find' function I've use do not seem to really do sub folders.

Any one have any ideas how i can locate the spreadsheet files ?

Any thoughts very very welcome !



Tim

[Rog131]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Maybe with the locate.

In the konsole:

1) Update/create file database:

sudo updatedb

2) Search with the locate

locate <pattern>

man locate

NAME
locate - find files by name

SYNOPSIS
locate [OPTION]... PATTERN...

DESCRIPTION
locate reads one or more databases prepared by updatedb(8) and writes file names matching at least one of the PATTERNs to standard output, one per line.

If --regex is not specified, PATTERNs can contain globbing characters. If any PATTERN contains no globbing characters, locate behaves as if the pattern were *PATTERN*.

By default, locate does not check whether files found in database still exist. locate can never report files created after the most recent update of the relevant database.

man updatedb

NAME
updatedb - update a database for mlocate

SYNOPSIS
updatedb [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION
updatedb creates or updates a database used by locate(1). If the database already exists, its data is reused to avoid rereading directories that have not changed.

[IndyTim]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

I'm making two gross assumptions:

1. You are brand new to Lx (as evidenced by your posting here ).
2. The xls extension is an excel extension AND the files were created in Windows.

So, if I'm on the right track so far, the files reside on your windows partition. Are you mounting the windows partition at bootup? In other words, can you "browse" the content of your windows partition within the Lx environment?

If the partition is not mounted, then you can search and locate until the "cows come home" and never find the files.

Hope this helps,

IndyTim

[Rog131]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

About the updatedb

The default is (at here) that it will build the database from the root and from the home directories. Database build from the /media is disabled as default.

/etc/updatedb.conf

PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS="yes"
# PRUNENAMES=".git .bzr .hg .svn"
PRUNEPATHS="/tmp /var/spool /media"
PRUNEFS="NFS nfs nfs4 rpc_pipefs afs binfmt_misc proc smbfs autofs iso9660 ncpfs coda devpts ftpfs devfs mfs shfs sysfs cifs lustre_lite tmpfs usbfs udf"

man updatedb.conf

NAME
/etc/updatedb.conf - a configuration file for updatedb(8)

DESCRIPTION
/etc/updatedb.conf is a text file. Blank lines are ignored. A # character outside of a quoted string starts a
comment extending until end of line.
...
PRUNEFS
A whitespace-separated list of file system types (as used in /etc/mtab) which should not be
scanned by updatedb(8)
...
PRUNEPATHS
A whitespace-separated list of path names of directories which should not be scanned by
updatedb(8).
...

If your .xls files are somewhere in the home directory then updatedb-locate should find them.

[Tim036]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Gulp !

I'm just a user of OpenOffice. No Windows partition.

It started with a template sent to me by a friend.

I extended it a lot and maybe I used the OpenOffice ext (what ext does office use for this normally) or maybe xls.

Do I have to wake up term for this?

No graphics interface to this task?

Kubuntu is running great but then I do a lot of not very many tasks.

Many thanks for responding.



Tim

[The Liquidator]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Tim

Open dolphin and under tools you will find a search function. You will be asked what directory(ies) you want to look in.

If you want to do a system wide search the directory to search under is simply /

However, if you don't have a windows partition then the most likely directory will be /home.

HTH

ian

[Rog131]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

As the "The Liquidator" told the find (Ctrl+F) should find the needed files...

Do I have to wake up term for this?

No graphics interface to this task?

There are


KDE 3.5

> kio-locate

Description:
kio-locate is a KDE I/O Slave for the locate command. This means that you can use kio-locate by simply typing in konquerors address box.

You can e.g. type "locate:index.html" to find all files that contain "index.html" in their name. There's even more: You can use kio-locate in all KDE applications, that accept URLs. Just take a look at the screenshots.

kio-locate is in the repositories..


KDE 4

Nepomuksearch

Nepomuk is (should be ) doing indexing. Settings: System Settings > (advanced) > Nepomuk

For searching with the nepomuk: open Dolphin and in the topbar enter:

nepomuksearch:KEYWORD

> fsrunner

fsrunner works same way as the locate. With the fsrunner you choose the directories which you want to index, after indexing you can press Alt+F2 and type the search pattern...

fsrunner binaries can be found from the ppa repositories > FAQ: Repositories

=> Show PPAs matching: fsrunner

[Tim036]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Tim

Open dolphin and under tools you will find a search function. You will be asked what directory(ies) you want to look in.

If you want to do a system wide search the directory to search under is simply /

However, if you don't have a windows partition then the most likely directory will be /home.

HTH

ian

Many thanks Ian !

Just what I needed but will it do wild cards like:-

*.xls for ant spreadsheet file ?

I don't know the file names

Yes it does ! Wow

I found them all ! I've over the moon ! Brilliant !

Many thanks to all those members who contributed !

Very very very gratefully appreciated !



Tim

[The Liquidator]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Great stuff , glad it worked

As Rog said, with a dolphin pane open, hitting CTRL+F will launch the file-finder. Over time, you'll probably find that whatever you want to do, there will be a shortcut for it.

[Tim036]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Just learning as I go, with your help !

Pressing need does sharpen the mind a tad !




Tim

[GreyGeek]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Gulp !

I'm just a user of OpenOffice. No Windows partition.

It started with a template sent to me by a friend.

I extended it a lot and maybe I used the OpenOffice ext (what ext does office use for this normally) or maybe xls.

Do I have to wake up term for this?

No graphics interface to this task?

Kubuntu is running great but then I do a lot of not very many tasks.

Many thanks for responding.



Tim

No need to apologize, Tim!

I've been using OpenOffice since it was first released, and StarOffice before that. Before I retired I worked in an office that was a Windows shop, at least until I came along... I always saved my spreadsheets in the xls format so my colleagues could use them in Excel. The habit has stuck for the most part, but now, since I don't have to share with folks who are Linux illiterate, I have begun using OOo formats.

[Alexander Barnes]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Thanks for sharing your results Tim ... strangely enough I hadn't known how to find files either and have been using Linux for almost a year I just take care to have good directory structure and not lose anything - testimony to how far I'll go to avoid learning something (?) - Alex. Your enthusiasm is contagious.

[flarson]

Re: Lost Files - is there a good find anywhere ?

Just to keep things straight, the Linux way to find files is to use the find command. Locate makes that faster and easier by running find and storing the results in a database. The use of Dolphin is the KDE4 way to find files, well actually that is not even true as KDE4 seems to have spent a lot of time on some tag based find system which I hope to learn about sometime.