[Discuss] File Systems vs.Databases Was: Re: SSH options (was Future of X11 (was Trying to connect to internet in Debian))

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On 1/23/26 6:50 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> plocate (successor to mlocate, locate, etc...) builds a database
> of every file in your system, so that you can query it when you
> don't know where a file is in the tree.

I haven't gotten around to debugging why, when I type "locate foo", it 
will miss stuff I know is there. (I blame systemd, always seems a good 
first approximation.)


> The primary advantage of all of these systems is that when
> something better comes along, re-indexing the files with the new
> system is *much easier* than trying to export and import all the
> data from one database to another. And, of course, they all get
> a free layer of cross-compatibility for dealing with the actual
> data - moves, name changes, copies, backups, deletions.

That is a very nice point. And the forensic value in being able to get 
at the real data in some stable form can be great. Trying to recover 
data from a database's underlying storage is not easy.

For me at the moment "locate" isn't working on my laptop, but I don't 
bother to fix it because *it* is not what is storing my files, so the 
fact it is broken isn't a great worry. I only lose a convenience not the 
data itself.


-kb