OpenSolaris

What's Meta Tracker

Tracker is a desktop search tool for extracting useful data from the files on a system, indexing them, so that you can easily quickly locate the file of your interest. By using Tracker, you no longer have to remember where you've left your files. To locate a file you only need to remember something about it, such as a word in the document or the artist of the song. This is because as well as searching for files in the traditional way, by name and location, Tracker searches files contents and metadata.

Here's a list of features that tracker has:

1. Tracker supports both free text search (like Beagle/Google) as well as structured searches using RDF Query. 
2. It responds in real time to filesystem changes, automaticaly keeping its metadata database up to date.
3. It extracts file contents as plain text and indexes them.
4. Can provide thumbnailing on the fly if a thumbnail does not currently exist.
5. Uses multilingual word stemmers to help find more relevant results. For example a search for motorbikes (plural) will also return results relevant to motorbike (singular).

Supported format for searching

Currently, Tracker supports searching of 

• Files
• Documents, include rtf, star office, pdf, ps, xml etc.
• Music: include mp3, ogg-vorbis etc
• Images include jpeg, png etc.
• Videos
• Text Files
• Development Files, include .c, .cpp, java, python, fortran, makefile etc.
• Emails (Evolution support available) 

Mime types to be supported:

• Playlists 
• Notes (in development) 
• Applications 
• People/Contacts 
• Conversations 
• Appointments 
• Tasks 
• Bookmarks and History 
• Projects
• email (Thunderbird support)

What's New

Tracker 0.6.6 is already in Solaris Nevada and OpenSolaris 2008.11.

Tracker on Solaris FAQ

1. Tracker is not running when I login into gnome, how to run it?
      tracker is not enabled by default,so when user login, it is not running. to run it,just run it in one console.
2. How to enale tracker by default?
      Start gnome-session-properties, check tracker, and login into gnome again.
3. When tracker is running, I can not find files under my home directory, why?
      Tracker does not enable index Home directory by default.  user need to enable it by run tracker-preferences to index it and restart tracker.
4. How to enable Home Directory Index ?
      Start tracker-preferences, select File Tab, Check the checkbox Index and watch my home directory, click OK button.  when a dialog prompt Data must be reindexed, click reindex.
5. I want to add another directory to be index, which is not under my home directory, how can I?
      Run tracker-preferences, select File Tab,  click Add button under Watch Directories, select the dir you want to add, then click OK button, and    reindex it.
6. If one file under one watched directory is changed, will tracker reindex it
   automatically?
      Yes. Tracker will monitor directory and files , when they are modified, added, delete, tracker will reindex it to keep the index data up to date.
7. Does tracker support thunderbird mail indexing?
      Yes. To use it,  please follow the steps:
      -Start Thunderbird, select menu Tools->Addon, click Tracker Indexer
      preferences, and check "Enable Indexing" checkbox, and restart thunderbird
      - start tracker-preferences, select Email Tab, check "Eanble Thunderbird
      email indexing", and reindex tracker
8. How to index evolution mail?
      Start tracker-preferences, select Email Tab, Check "Eanble Evolution email indexing" and reindex tracker.
9. How to index firefox web page?
      - Start firefox,
      - select menu Tools-Addon,
      - click "Firefox extension for Xesam search enginer" preferences.
      - set "Default Action" as Index,
      - and restart firefox.
      - Or you can right-click in firefox when browse one URL.
      - Select "Search->Index This Page" to index the current page.
10. How do I know that tracker indexing is working or not?
       Run tracker-status to check tracker's status, idle or busy.
11. I want to know how many data tracker has indexed, how ?
       Run tracker-stats to know information of tracker indexed data.

Screen Shots

tracker-search-tool

tracker-search-tool is a graphical Tracker search tool for GNOME, allowing search/browse result.
It now supports the following features:
   - Search all associated mime metadata and tags, and show them in different Mime Types tabs
   - Open a select metadata file with correct application
   - Manage tags for certain file, add/remove

• Emails result.
• All Files result
• Folders result
• Documents result
• Images result
• Text result
• Development result
• Chat logs result
• Applications result

Missing Functionality

• No help content
• No save result function

tracker-preferences
   tracker-preferences is a GUI tool to allow user can change his configuration file $HOME/.config/tracker.cfg
   easily and quickly, without editing that configuration file manually.

• General tab
• Performance tab
• Files tab
• Ignored Files tab
• Emails tab

Missing Functionality

• It cannot support all configuration keys for trackerd, such as "Log Verbosity" ,Throttle
• No Help content
• No Performance tab

tracker-search-tool screen shots  
Tracker preference setting  
Integration of tracker with nautilus and deskbar

Contact Us

If you have any problem with using tracker or, please send an email to desktop-discuss@opensolaris.org

Links
Meta Tracker project home page