No locate.db even after running updatedb

gentoolocate

Any clue what's up with this?

djc@miles rebar $ sudo updatedb
djc@miles rebar $ locate .dialyzer_plt
locate: can not stat () `/var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db': No such file or directory
djc@miles rebar $ sudo su -l
miles ~ # cd /var/lib/mlocate/
miles mlocate # ls -l
total 51576
-rw------- 1 root root  6553600 Oct  1 03:13 mlocate.db.AkeorG
-rw------- 1 root root  6635520 Oct  3 03:14 mlocate.db.EY0KT9
-rw------- 1 root root  6639616 Oct  4 10:34 mlocate.db.EiWVGW
-rw------- 1 root root  6230016 Sep 30 03:14 mlocate.db.Shbi49
-rw------- 1 root root 13447168 Sep 29 14:40 mlocate.db.VAo6El
-rw------- 1 root root  6668288 Oct  4 03:12 mlocate.db.gTyzDl
-rw------- 1 root root  6635520 Oct  2 03:12 mlocate.db.o0nXlW

Best Answer

When mlocate finish the updatedb, write the final file with the user root and other group. Verify the permissions in the directory "mlocate":

drwxr-x--- 2 root slocate 4096 Oct 25 18:02 mlocate

Related Solutions

Progress bar in updatedb

No, there's no such option, as well it shouldn't have any.

If you need to measure that, you must first know how many files are present on your system, that means loop through everything twice, it can be slow

One evicent example is that if you extract kernel source code with file-roller, it's slower than doing the same thing with tar directly, because file-roller need to file out all files first(otherwise the progress bar might be incorrectly displayed), and you wait for a while before extraction process actually began.

Cannot delete file, but can delete parent directory

locate is not dependable for live, current information about what files are present on your system. Information is cached in a database.

Also consider the famous line, with link:

It's not working! Should I blame caching?

For actual current information on what files/directories exist on your box right now, use ls or find or stat or test -e filename && echo it is there or even printf %s\\n *. Pretty much anything except locate will give you up-to-date information about your filesystem.

See also LESS=+/BUGS man locate which (on my system) reads in part:

BUGS
 The locate program may fail to list some files that are present, or may
 list files that have been removed from the system.  This is because
 locate only reports files that are present in the database...

You can run updatedb, but honestly if you know exactly where the files are and you are using locate to find them...you are simply doing it wrong. locate tells you a path. It tells you nothing about the existence or nonexistence of files at that path. If you already know the path to the file, you don't need locate, do you?

The purpose of locate is to "find filenames quickly", not necessarily accurately or dependably.

_{Note: I'm not saying "don't use locate." It does have a purpose, when you have no idea where on your system a certain file might be. But once you get the pathname from locate, it has served its purpose and you now need to use other tools to examine/verify/etc. the file you've found.}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Progress bar in updatedb

Cannot delete file, but can delete parent directory

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