This manual page
documents the GNU version of
updatedb,
which updates file name databases used by GNU
locate.
The file name databases contain lists of files that were in
particular directory trees when the databases were last updated.
The file name of the default database is determined when locate
and updatedb are configured and installed. The frequency with
which the databases are updated and the directories for which they
contain entries depend on how often updatedb is run, and with
which arguments.
In networked environments, it often makes sense to build a database at
the root of each filesystem, containing the entries for that filesystem.
updatedb
is then run for each filesystem on the fileserver where that
filesystem is on a local disk, to prevent thrashing the network.
Users can select which databases locate searches using an
environment variable or command line option; see locate(1L).
Databases can not be concatenated together.
The file name database format changed starting with GNU
find
and
locate
version 4.0 to allow machines with diffent byte orderings to share
the databases. The new GNU
locate
can read both the old and new database formats.
However, old versions of
locate
and
find
produce incorrect results if given a new-format database.
