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  • Debian 12: /etc/updatedb.conf and it's man page are missing

    From Roger Price@21:1/5 to All on Mon Mar 17 18:00:01 2025
    This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
    while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.

    Debian 12 doesnt include the /etc/updatedb.conf file. I use locate to find things in /mnt. This needs a modified PRUNEPATHS declaration, so I copied an /etc/updatedb.conf which doesnt prune /mnt from a Debian 11 installation.

    I am surprised to see no /etc/updatedb.conf in Debian 12. Is this deliberate?

    The man (5) page for updatedb.conf is also missing.

    Roger

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  • From Charles Curley@21:1/5 to Roger Price on Mon Mar 17 19:10:01 2025
    On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 17:51:33 +0100 (CET)
    Roger Price <debian@rogerprice.org> wrote:

    Debian 12 doesn´t include the /etc/updatedb.conf file.


    charles@hawk:~$ apt-file search updatedb.conf
    plocate: /etc/updatedb.conf
    plocate: /usr/share/man/man5/updatedb.conf.5.gz
    charles@hawk:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
    12.10
    charles@hawk:~$ apt show plocate
    Package: plocate
    Version: 1.1.18-1
    Priority: optional
    Section: utils
    Maintainer: Steinar H. Gunderson <sesse@debian.org>
    Installed-Size: 535 kB
    Depends: libc6 (>= 2.34), libgcc-s1 (>= 3.0), libstdc++6 (>= 12), liburing2 (>= 2.3), libzstd1 (>= 1.5.2), adduser
    Suggests: systemd-sysv | powermgmt-base, systemd-sysv | nocache
    Breaks: mlocate (<< 1.1.7)
    Replaces: mlocate (<< 1.1.7)
    Homepage: https://plocate.sesse.net/
    Download-Size: 125 kB
    APT-Manual-Installed: no
    APT-Sources: http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm/main amd64 Packages Description: much faster locate
    plocate is a locate(1) based on posting lists, giving much faster searches
    on a much smaller index. It is a drop-in replacement for mlocate in nearly
    all aspects, and is fast on SSDs and non-SSDs alike.

    charles@hawk:~$


    --
    Does anybody read signatures any more?

    https://charlescurley.com
    https://charlescurley.com/blog/

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  • From Roger Price@21:1/5 to Charles Curley on Tue Mar 18 11:10:01 2025
    This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
    while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.

    On Mon, 17 Mar 2025, Charles Curley wrote:

    charles@hawk:~$ apt show plocate
    Package: plocate
    ...
    Replaces: mlocate (<< 1.1.7)
    ...
    Description: much faster locate

    I removed my /etc/updatedb.conf, uninstalled package locate, installed package plocate, and ran updatedb as root. The command locate is now defined as
    /usr/bin/locate -> /etc/alternatives/locate* -> /usr/bin/plocate*

    I didn´t need to modify /etc/updatedb.conf, PRUNEPATHS already allows /mnt .

    It looks as if package locate could be retired. Roger

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  • From Jonathan Dowland@21:1/5 to Roger Price on Tue Mar 18 14:40:01 2025
    On Tue Mar 18, 2025 at 10:04 AM GMT, Roger Price wrote:
    I removed my /etc/updatedb.conf, uninstalled package locate, installed package plocate, and ran updatedb as root. The command locate is now defined as /usr/bin/locate -> /etc/alternatives/locate* ->
    /usr/bin/plocate*

    I didn´t need to modify /etc/updatedb.conf, PRUNEPATHS already allows /mnt .

    It looks as if package locate could be retired. Roger

    The GNU locate program, built from source package "findutils", was
    originally shipped in binary package "findutils", which is an Essential package. Therefore, everybody had GNU locate/updatedb/updatedb.conf,
    until it was split off into binary package "locate" (which is not
    Essential). (#448523)

    /etc/updatedb.conf was removed around the same time as the package
    split. The contents of it migrated into the cron job definition instead.
    As it happens, GNU updatedb never actually read updatedb.conf, so it was mis-named: it was always only sourced by the cron job. (#342713) (Note
    that, for plocate, updatedb.conf *is* read by updatedb.)

    Making GNU locate optional opened up the opportunity for alternative implementations of locate/updatedb. For a while there was "mlocate", but Steinar H. Gunderson wrote "plocate" as a much faster replacement. It's
    the de-facto recommended implementation of find/locate for Debian (but
    no find/locate implementation is Essential anymore)


    --
    Please do not CC me for listmail.

    👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
    ✎ jmtd@debian.org
    🔗 https://jmtd.net

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