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

[slitt at troubleshooters.com (Steve Litt)]

Dan Ritter said on Fri, 23 Jan 2026 10:32:14 -0500

>Kent Borg wrote: 
>> 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.)  
>
>
>First place to look: how recently was updatedb run by cron or a
>systemd timer? Does the timestamp on the db file correspond?

Also, updatedb ignores files it doesn't have rights to, so unless it is
run as root, by design it will be incomplete.

SteveT

Steve Litt 

http://444domains.com