locate.conf(5) [netbsd man page]
LOCATE.CONF(5) BSD File Formats Manual LOCATE.CONF(5) NAME
locate.conf -- locate database configuration file DESCRIPTION
The locate.conf file specifies the behavior of locate.updatedb(8), which creates the locate(1) database. The locate.conf file contains a list of newline separated records, each of which is composed of a keyword and arguments, which are separated by white space. Arguments with embedded shell metacharacters must be quoted in sh(1) style. Lines beginning with ``#'' are treated as com- ments and ignored. However, a ``#'' in the middle of a line does not start a comment. The configuration options are as follows: ignore pattern ... Ignore files or directories. When building the database, do not descend into files or directories which match one of the specified patterns. The matched files or directories are not stored to the database. Default: Not specified. ignorecontents pattern ... Ignore contents of directories. When building the database, do not descend into files or directories which match one of the speci- fied patterns. The matched files or directories themselves are stored to the database. Default: Not specified. ignorefs type ... Ignore file system by type, adding type to the default list. When building the database, do not descend into file systems which are of the specified type. The mount points are not stored to the database. If a ``!'' is prepended to type, the meaning is negated, that is, ignore file systems which do not have the type. As a special case, if ``none'' is specified for type, the ignorefs list is cleared and all file systems are traversed. type is used as an argument to find(1) -fstype. The sysctl(8) command can be used to find out the types of file systems that are available on the system: sysctl vfs.generic.fstypes Default: !local cd9660 fdesc kernfs procfs searchpath directory ... Specify base directories to be put in the database. Default: / workdir directory Specify the working directory of locate.updatedb, in which a temporary file is placed. The temporary file is a list of all files, and you should specify a directory that has enough space to hold it. Default: /tmp Refer to find(1) for the details of pattern (see -path expression) and type (see -fstype expression). FILES
/etc/locate.conf The file locate.conf resides in /etc. SEE ALSO
find(1), locate(1), locate.updatedb(8), sysctl(8) HISTORY
The locate.conf file format first appeared in NetBSD 2.0. AUTHORS
ITOH Yasufumi BSD
July 10, 2011 BSD
Check Out this Related Man Page
LOCATE(1) BSD General Commands Manual LOCATE(1) NAME
locate -- find filenames quickly SYNOPSIS
locate [-0Scims] [-l limit] [-d database] pattern ... DESCRIPTION
The locate program searches a database for all pathnames which match the specified pattern. The database is recomputed periodically (usually weekly or daily), and contains the pathnames of all files which are publicly accessible. Shell globbing and quoting characters (``*'', ``?'', ``'', ``['' and ``]'') may be used in pattern, although they will have to be escaped from the shell. Preceding any character with a backslash (``'') eliminates any special meaning which it may have. The matching differs in that no characters must be matched explicitly, including slashes (``/''). As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters (``foo'') is matched as though it were ``*foo*''. Historically, locate only stored characters between 32 and 127. The current implementation store any character except newline (' ') and NUL (' '). The 8-bit character support does not waste extra space for plain ASCII file names. Characters less than 32 or greater than 127 are stored in 2 bytes. The following options are available: -0 Print pathnames separated by an ASCII NUL character (character code 0) instead of default NL (newline, character code 10). -S Print some statistics about the database and exit. -c Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching file names. -d database Search in database instead of the default file name database. Multiple -d options are allowed. Each additional -d option adds the specified database to the list of databases to be searched. The option database may be a colon-separated list of databases. A single colon is a reference to the default database. $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb: foo will first search string ``foo'' in $HOME/lib/mydb and then in /var/db/locate.database. $ locate -d $HOME/lib/mydb::/cdrom/locate.database foo will first search string ``foo'' in $HOME/lib/mydb and then in /var/db/locate.database and then in /cdrom/locate.database. $ locate -d db1 -d db2 -d db3 pattern is the same as $ locate -d db1:db2:db3 pattern or $ locate -d db1:db2 -d db3 pattern If - is given as the database name, standard input will be read instead. For example, you can compress your database and use: $ zcat database.gz | locate -d - pattern This might be useful on machines with a fast CPU and little RAM and slow I/O. Note: you can only use one pattern for stdin. -i Ignore case distinctions in both the pattern and the database. -l number Limit output to number of file names and exit. -m Use mmap(2) instead of the stdio(3) library. This is the default behavior and is faster in most cases. -s Use the stdio(3) library instead of mmap(2). ENVIRONMENT
LOCATE_PATH path to the locate database if set and not empty, ignored if the -d option was specified. FILES
/var/db/locate.database locate database /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb Script to update the locate database /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist Job that starts the database rebuild SEE ALSO
find(1), whereis(1), which(1), fnmatch(3), locate.updatedb(8) Woods, James A., "Finding Files Fast", ;login, 8:1, pp. 8-10, 1983. HISTORY
The locate command first appeared in 4.4BSD. Many new features were added in FreeBSD 2.2. 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, which is typically only regenerated once a week by the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist job. Use find(1) to locate files that are of a more transitory nature. The locate database is typically built by user ``nobody'' and the locate.updatedb(8) utility skips directories which are not readable for user ``nobody'', group ``nobody'', or world. For example, if your HOME directory is not world-readable, none of your files are in the data- base. The locate database is not byte order independent. It is not possible to share the databases between machines with different byte order. The current locate implementation understands databases in host byte order or network byte order if both architectures use the same integer size. So on a FreeBSD/i386 machine (little endian), you can read a locate database which was built on SunOS/sparc machine (big endian, net). The locate utility does not recognize multibyte characters. BSD
August 17, 2006 BSD