Ubuntu

Synaptic search speed

Asked by Austin Lund

Synaptic seems to take forever searching even very simple searches. Is there way to speed this up? Is there an indexing function?

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Markus Thielmann
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Connor Imes (ckimes) said : 		#1

This is probably because the Ubuntu servers and mirrors are getting pounded with everybody upgrading to Hardy, since it was just released the other day. I would give it time. You can try and find a faster mirror by going to System->Administration->Software Sources and choosing a different "Download from" mirror (select Other from the drop down list). Hit "Select Best Server" and it will scan them all and find the fastest one for you. Make sure you allow Software Sources to update when you Close it, otherwise run in terminal:
$ sudo apt-get update

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Austin Lund (austin-lund) said : 		#2

This is not the question I asked. I asked if synaptic search can be speed up. Not if updating my repositories could be made quicker.

For example, I was searching for IRC clients in synaptic, and searching for "irc" seemed to take at least 30-40 seconds.

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Best Markus Thielmann (thielmann) said : 		#3

You're able to select a search for "name" or "name and description". Changing to "name" only will decrease the time needed to search the package base.

Other than that, there's no preference you're able to change.

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#4

You can also try to use terminal and do your search with:

aptitude search "word_to_search"

or

apt-cache search "word_to_search"

Hth

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Austin Lund (austin-lund) said : 		#5

Thanks Markus Thielmann, that solved my question.

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Austin Lund (austin-lund) said : 		#6

Searching by name is much much faster. It probably needs to be thought about what the default setting should be. Or if there is a better way to index the search, or something of the like.