'find' running automatically

allelopath · 08-04-2006, 11:03 AM

On my laptop running OpenSuSE 10.1, the hard drive gets busy all by itself somtimes for a few minutes. If I do a top command while this is happening, the command listed first is 'find' with user 'nobody'. My theories about why this is happening are:
1. some sort of cataloging is going on
2. a virus or some other bad thing

Can anybody set me straight?

spirit receiver · 08-04-2006, 12:09 PM

That's probably updatedb which runs once a day. Its purpose is to build a database of your files, so that they can be located using "locate filename".

theNbomr · 08-04-2006, 12:12 PM

When you see this event occurr, run 'ps -e fl' (that is a lowercase ell, not a one). What is the parent-process-ID of the find process? The tree view should show how the find process got started.

--- rod.

allelopath · 08-05-2006, 10:44 AM

thanks for your replies, it helped me discover that cron daily is running Beagle.