I run Debian buster with the Mate desktop - recently upgraded from stretch. If I launch mate-search-tool from the panel, I get the message "No files found". I experimented with launching from the command line - obtained via mate-terminal. Here are the results:

I wonder if other users of debian mate mate-search-tool have had this experience? The manual for mate-search-tool just repeats what is on the GUI, and dconf has little to add. There are no relevant mate-search-tool related configuration files in my ~$/.config directory.

I am hoping that someone knows of a config file that may need tuning?

From the man page:
Have you tried running updatedb and then running mate-search-tool? Also, did mate-search-tool actually return results when you ran it as root?

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks individual for your two comments. To answer in reverse order:

I get a root terminal using added to the panel. This did actually return correct results. When the search is completed, the terminal shows an error message:
In my original post the sudo search also worked.

For your other question, I do not have the updatedb command available. This is provided by the packages dlocate and mlocate, neither of which are installed on my system. I am wondering which is better for my simple requirements - basically searching through the file system looking for particular bits of text?

I have been doing a bit of digging, as apart from this mate-search-tool issue I also have GUI issues in pluma. I sometimes find a huge number of errors reported in .xsession-errors, many associated with mate and I wonder if those are relevant? But I think those issues should be in different thread.

Just one more thing: the root terminal is launched from gksu , and it turns out that gksu is obsoleted. It is used in several of the mate utilities.

I have now installed the package dlocate. This provides a perl script and some manuals:
But there is no mention of the command updatedb in either of the above manuals.

I wonder if I have the right package?

What exactly is updatedb supposed to do?

updatedb updates the db (sic) that the locate cmd uses

I never rely on that because it's only right immediately after a run (from cron usually) daily.

I just use good old 'find', which is slower because it actually goes and searches the disk immediately, but I usually have at least a rough idea where stuff is, so I rarely search the whole disk.

This looks like you're paraphrasing, not like the actual terminal output.
Please show us the actual terminal output.
Also add

I am aware of the dangers of paraphrasing, and for this reason showed the exact terminal output. When you run from the terminal, the search dialogue is displayed. When the search is completed, the terminal is waiting for further input. On closing the dialogue, the command completes.

However, rerunning the experiments, I went one step further to see the command result. I have repeated all the experiments. They give the same results and I have shown just the first and last here. I have added your request and shown the command result as well - all copied as is from the terminal .

^ OK, thanks for explaining it better.
What are you searching for?
Possibly you (normal user) just don't have permission to look inside the files that contain it.

BTW, running a GUI tool as root can mess things up. Try not to do it.