Does locate update its database each time I remove a file?
 

Hi: What's asked.

Kernel 2.6.21.5, Slackware 12.0
slocate 3.1

No, you need to run
You can use a cronjob if needed.

Kind regards

However, I've just made a test, running locate and then removing (rm) one of the listed files, and locate did not listed. How can that be?

You are right, curious to know how this works.

Kind regards

From the slocate manual:

Presumably that would imply that if the file no longer exists then the user would not have access to it and it would not be displayed.

I would swear that locate went on displaying erased files long time after they had been erased as long as I did not run updatedb! What is curious is that I have not changed my slackware version.

Just a guess: Perhaps if you use locate as root it determines that you have no access restrictions and bypasses the permission tests - and therefore the 'existance' test as well.

It happens that I always run locate as root.

I'm not on Slackware. On Ubuntu, I always run updatedb as root. After that locate always give correct results.

No If you delete a file, it remains in slocate.db until the next update. That said, if you subsequently searched for that deleted file, locate (slocate) checks for physical existence, because that file no longer exist, it's entry in slocate.db will be removed. In this case the database is updated.

FYI, with a default, normal install of Slackware, updatedb is run daily at 0440 via a cron script in /etc/cron.daily/

Thanks very much. As to cron.daily, I removed the entry because sometimes updatedb began to run while I was burning optical media.

Burning disk at 4:40am? That's dedication.... ;)

That shouldn't effect burning media, especially since updatedb is started with:

Note also that locate has two options (-e/-E) that check whether each matching file actually exists at that time, before printing the results. See the man page.

Well, my version is 3.1, from 2006, and only has
-e <dir1, dir2, ...>
which excludes those directories from the locate database.

This -e option would be very handy for me if only I knew how to use it. What I see is that That is, /home/semoi/bee9 was not excluded!

The -e option is used in combination with the -u or-U options.

from locate, slocate, updatedb --help
You best bet to exclude would be to add /home/semoi/bee9 to /etc/updatedb.conf

You will have to run updatedb again.

But is there not a way to exclude a certain path when running locate without having to update the database again? Of course there is always locate beethoven | grep -v /home/semoi/bee9

Ah-ha. I just realized my mistake. I was talking about the locate from findutils, not slocate. :doh: Ignore my last post.

Thanks for your post anyways and regards.

Sadly these is not, your grep solution is a winner. I also sometimes just go with find. :)

Fine. Now watch this:
Are you not speaking about some slocate version > 3.1?