UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

In my RH 6.0, I would like to use <b>locate</b> command. The syntax is simple.

<b>locate part-of-file</b>

Of course, we can pipe the output to <b>grep</b>.

<b>locate part-of-file | grep string</b>

This command searches a text file <b> /var/lib/slocate/slocate.db</b> which holds all the file names in the system. We need to update this file by command <b>updatedb</b>. If you like, you can put <b>updatedb</b> into the crontab to update slocate.db periodically.

change to the target dir that you suspect the file is and do a

ls -l |grep "part of a filename(s)"

just remember that if you are using the find command and your start your search at /, then one should be the superuser to execute. otherwise, as a regular user one will get a lot of "permission denied" error messages because regular users don't have permissions to search or "look" in a lot of directories under the root directory(especially under /usr).

just my two cents because once again, I learned this the hard way

I have used before a quick little hack in places that I could not install the "slocate" package. I run a job from cron similar to the following:
find / -type f -print >/root/etc/list.files 2>/dev/null
Then I wrote a simple finder script that searches through the list for the files - it's a LOT faster than waiting for find to complete! Plus, with a little fancy scripting (guffaw), you can search for items only in "bin" directories, or in your $PATH, incase you think you know the name of a program, but forgot exactly what it is.

I now think that slocate is a better idea, since it "remembers" permissions - so if you can't view it anyway, it won't show up.

Yes, <b>find / | grep ...</b> takes too much time. It is better to cron <b>updatedb</b> at time when machine is idle. slocate also control permissions.