[Owncloud] Trackerd based server side search app

[Frank Karlitschek]

Hi Jörn,


I think this a great idea. 
The problem is, of course, that it has external dependencies like tracker obviously but it can still be very useful for power users who have tracerd running. So this is a nice optional feature imho.

The challenge is that indexing has to be done through ownCloud because this is the only way to access encrypted, shared and remote files. 
Do you think tracer can access the ownCloud files via WebDAB? or do we have to provide a different interface? 


Cheers
Frank



On 06.04.2012, at 05:15, Jörn Friedrich Dreyer <jfd at butonic.de> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> after scratching my itch of server side searching I cleaned up the
> code a bit, removed /most/ hardcoded paths and commited a shiny new
> app to github: https://gitorious.org/~butonic/owncloud/butonics-owncloud
> 
> On the one hand, the installation is fairly easy on a ubuntu system
> (running precise):
> 
> # install trackerd and pear
> sudo apt-get install tracker php5-pear
> # use pecl to install the php dbus extension
> sudo pecl install dbus-beta
> # activate the dbus extension
> sudo echo "extension=dbus.so" > /etc/php5/conf.d/dbus.ini
> # restart apache
> sudo service apache2 restart
> 
> On the other hand, running the app is a little more ... hackerish and
> I admit: it needs some more love to make it end user ready, so
> consider it EXPERIMENTAL!
> Before using the app, we need to run a shell script that brings up a
> dbus-daemon and starts a headless version of trackerd:
> 
> # open a screen session
> screen
> # become your webserver user
> sudo su www-data
> # change into the trackerd_search app directory
> cd /var/www/owncloud/apps/trackerd_search
> # or cd /home/yourhomedir/public_html/owncloud/apps/trackerd_search
> # manually fix the OC_CONFIG_DATADIRECTORY in the trackerd_headless.sh
> script. I could propably generate that script when first running
> owncloud
> vi trackerd_headless.sh
> # run it
> sh trackerd_headless.sh
> # it should now start a dbus-daemon for our trackerd communication,
> bring up the tracker store and launch our tracker-miner. It should
> auto create any directories and files and start indexing. Maybe you
> need to configure the indexed paths:
> vi /var/www/owncloud/data/trackerd_search/config/tracker/tracker-miner-fs.cfg
> 
> If you are lucky you will now be able to search through your file
> contents and meta information by using the standard search field of
> owncloud with the power of a desktop search engine.
> Fixing problems requires a bit of knowledge about dbus and trackerd
> ... or time on my side, which is kinda scarce at the moment as I am
> writing my PhD.
> If you want to kill the processes do not forget to also kill the dbus
> daemon running for www-data:
> 
> $ ps axu | grep tracker | grep www-data | grep -v grep
> www-data  9235  0.0  0.0  24040  1500 ?        Ss   03:23   0:00
> dbus-daemon --config-file=session.conf
> --address=unix:path=/pth/to/your/owncloud/data/trackerd_search/owncloud_trackerd_dbus_socket
> --fork
> www-data  9236  0.0  0.0 323260  8764 pts/1    Sl   03:23   0:00
> /usr/lib/tracker/tracker-store
> www-data  9248  0.0  0.0 325720  8504 pts/1    SNl  03:23   0:00
> /usr/lib/tracker/tracker-miner-fs
> 
> The plugin itself is only about 160 LoC. I do have some plans for the
> plugin but I wanted to let others try it out and hopefully provide a
> starting point for a useful server side search. The php / dbus /
> tracker hack was originally inpired by providing a sever side search
> for a samba share but that also requires a browser plugin or
> configuration hack to circumvent the same origin policy for file://
> urls. Nevertheless, clicking links in the browser and having them open
> files on a mounted webdav share is really nice ...
> 
> Anyway, I'm tired ...
> 
> so long, feedback welcome
> 
> Jörn
> 
> 
> --
> A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion
> Q. Why is top posting bad?
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