Search always empty

pka · April 28, 2026, 12:53pm

I’m using atuin locally since a long time and I’m updating regurarely with mice. Since 1-2 weeks the interactive search shows no results:

There seems to be no history. But all non-interactive commands work: atuin history last, atuin stats, atuin search.

I’ve tried with a new config, a new history db, but nothing helps. Any ideas?

Atuin Doctor
Checking for diagnostics


Please include the output below with any bug reports or issues

{
  "atuin": {
    "version": "18.15.2",
    "commit": "1b4eb4901d256637c75849f0e4f82e476934b922",
    "sync": null,
    "sqlite_version": "3.46.0"
  },
  "shell": {
    "name": "bash",
    "default": "bash",
    "plugins": [
      "atuin",
      "bash-preexec"
    ],
    "preexec": "bash-preexec"
  },
  "system": {
    "os": "Fedora Linux",
    "arch": "x86_64",
    "version": "43",
    "disks": [
      {
        "name": "/dev/nvme0n1p4",
        "filesystem": "btrfs"
      },
      {
        "name": "/dev/nvme0n1p4",
        "filesystem": "btrfs"
      },
      {
        "name": "/dev/nvme0n1p3",
        "filesystem": "ext4"
      },
      {
        "name": "/dev/nvme0n1p1",
        "filesystem": "vfat"
      }
    ]
  }
}

OliverS · April 28, 2026, 2:32pm

Things you could try:

minimal .bashrc:

# at the top (or remove):
eval "$(atuin init hex)"

# at the bottom:
eval "$(atuin init bash --disable-ai)"

ble.sh instead of bash-preexec (or maybe a newer version)
another shell like zsh or fish just to check if the problem is shell config related

pka · April 29, 2026, 12:44pm

Thanks for your inputs!

The only thing which helped, was a downgrade to atuin 18.13.6

dispanser · May 11, 2026, 6:35pm

I’m seeing the exact same thing - atuin search works, but any of the search modes shows empty. Tested on fish (my regular shell), bash (raw / no actual .bashrc) and zsh (also raw).

Did you make any progress except for a downgrade?

pka · May 11, 2026, 8:01pm

No. Did try a lot of things before, but gave up for now.

ellie · May 11, 2026, 8:18pm

Are you using the daemon? Check your config file

search_mode = "daemon_fuzzy" will mean that you are, and in order for search to function the daemon must be running. Docs for the daemon: daemon - Atuin Documentation

Either way, I would recommend using it. Searches (and everything else) will be much faster

pka · May 11, 2026, 8:36pm

Yes, I’m using `search_mode = "daemon_fuzzy"` with daemon autostart.

ellie · May 11, 2026, 8:38pm

what is the result of atuin daemon status?

pka · May 11, 2026, 9:00pm

Oh

atuin daemon status
Daemon is not running

and atuin daemon start hangs.

But I’m currently back on atuin 18.13.6 and search_mode = “fuzzy”

I’m sure that the deamon was running in atuin 18.15.2.

ellie · May 11, 2026, 9:05pm

it would only have autostarted if you have

[daemon]
enabled = true
autostart = true

in your config

pka · August 4, 2026, 8:23pm

In the meantime I’ve tried updating from 18.13.6 a few times, but search was empty all the time. The only thing which gave some results was search_mode = "skim".

Now with 18.19.0 this workaround is gone. Current state with search_mode = "daemon-fuzzy" and daemon autostart:

$ atuin daemon status
Daemon running
PID:      10287
Version:  18.19.0
Protocol: 1
Healthy:  true
Socket:   /run/user/1000/atuin.sock

Search with Ctrl-R is still empty, but atuin search returns results.

One log entry looks suspicious though:

2026-08-04T20:09:29.579914Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading history into search index; page size = 5000
2026-08-04T20:09:29.580116Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::sync: sync loop starting
2026-08-04T20:09:29.580182Z INFO atuin_daemon: config file watcher started
2026-08-04T20:09:29.580433Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Frecency map built
2026-08-04T20:09:29.580524Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::sync: sync tick
2026-08-04T20:09:29.972238Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:30.310276Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:30.679108Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:30.956605Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:31.188645Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:31.383995Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:31.565206Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:31.732223Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:31.883683Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:32.015739Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:32.102161Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 5000 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:32.122840Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Loading 1135 history entries into search index
2026-08-04T20:09:32.123522Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: History load complete; 0 unique commands indexed
2026-08-04T20:09:32.123550Z INFO atuin_daemon::components::search: Frecency map built

-> 0 unique commands indexed ?!

OliverS · August 5, 2026, 11:50am

Do you also get zero results if you start with a filter that should give you a few results?
I suspect, you have some kind of invalid characters in your history.

bash-johnson · August 5, 2026, 6:50pm

Confirming the same issue on 18.19.0 (Raspberry Pi 4, aarch64, Raspberry Pi OS):

atuin history list and atuin search <query> return full results, but Ctrl-R/up-arrow interactive search is empty. Same daemon log pattern as reported above (Loading N history entries into search index followed by History load complete; 0 unique commands indexed).

Additional data point: switching search_mode from daemon_fuzzy to plain fuzzy does not fix it either on 18.19.0 - still zero results interactively, only non-interactive commands work. So this doesn’t look daemon-specific anymore; the indexing problem seems to affect the fuzzy engine generally, not just the daemon path.

Also tried downgrading to 18.13.6 as a workaround (per this thread) and hit a new issue:

Error: migration 20260709214605 was previously applied but is missing in the resolved migrations

18.13.6 refuses to start at all against a history.db that’s already been migrated forward by 18.19.0 - fails safe, no data touched, but it means the 18.13.6 workaround isn’t reachable anymore without restoring a pre-18.14ish backup of history.db. Might be worth a note in this thread that the downgrade path is closing off as people update forward.

pka · August 7, 2026, 8:23pm

I looked into the code and found the reason.

History entries from users with the same name as an agent are skipped when indexing:

github.com/atuinsh/atuin

crates/atuin-daemon/src/search/index.rs

c2f471880


      
                  interner: Arc::new(ThreadedRodeo::new()),
                  shells,
              }
          }
          
          /// Add a history entry to the index.
          ///
          /// If the command already exists, updates its invocation data.
          /// If it's a new command, adds it to both the map and Nucleo.
          pub fn add_history(&self, history: &History) {
              if is_known_agent(&history.author) {
                  return;
              }
              if !self
                  .shells
                  .contains(history.shell.as_deref().unwrap_or_default())
              {
                  return;
              }
          
              let command = history.command.as_str();

My username is pi, the first two characters of my first name. The same as the default username on Raspberry Pis…

ellie · August 7, 2026, 8:24pm

ahhh that would do it will get it fixed for the next release. sorry about that

pka · August 31, 2026, 9:31am

Fixed in 18.20.0, thanks a lot!

ellie · August 31, 2026, 6:17pm

thank you for confirming! I’d like to ensure we test properly on raspberry pis soon too