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-   -   Quick slocate/updatedb question? (

King of Japan 07-28-2004 12:16 PM

Quick slocate/updatedb question?
I'm running Redhat 9 with a default install.
Now that that's out of the way;

The slocate/updatedb is a fine and dandy, and a rather handy little thingie.
However, It just seems to randomly kick off after boot everyday (I know it's supposed to do this) after an hour to two hours. Why the randomness?


The problem is I burn a lot of CDs and I don't want it to kick off while I'm in the process of burning. I'm afraid it will screw up the CD's since updatedb brings my system to a crawl.

So if I just do a slocate -c right after boot will that tell the cron job that updatedb has already ran and it won't run again for 24 hours so I can be sure it's safe to burn some CDs?

Does the updatedb redo the db from scratch or does it only make changes to the db that correspond to the changes made on the harddrive?

I'm just thinking if I do a slocate -c after boot it will try to completely redo and overwrite the current db instead of just updating the current one which might take a long time.

Essentially will a slocate -c behave the same (If indeed this is the right command) as letting the cron job do it the way it does by default?

Hope I made a bit of sense here.


Tinkster 07-28-2004 12:43 PM

If it's random it's not cron, but maybe anacron,
but that may vary, if it's not random but you just
don't turn the machine on at the same time all
the time ...

The easiest way to find out what the cron-job
does would be to look at it ;)

Commonly it does a updatedb -c

As for the question whether it re-writes the data-
base every time, or whether it updates it: I wouldn't
know, would have to look at the source (or ask the


King of Japan 07-28-2004 02:04 PM

Thanks for the input.

Points well taken.

I guess I could also just run it and see what happens.

Probably move the current updatedb somewhere and run it, play around with it and see what happens.

jschiwal 08-29-2004 11:21 AM

Locate the updatedb command entry in your cron or anacron table and make it 'nice'. Precede the command with the command 'nice +13' to lower the priority level of the updatedb command.

The anacron table is /etc/anacrontab
You can view the man pages, man 8 anacron or man 5 anacrontab.

Or you could stop the anacron service before you burn your CDs.
'/sbin/service anacron stop' as root.

King of Japan 08-29-2004 01:35 PM

Thank you Mr.

Will try.
