Locate command

Rem P Roberti remegius at comcast.net
Thu Jul 10 17:05:49 UTC 2008


> Rem P Roberti wrote:
> >>Hello,
> >>
> >>>>Actually, the very first thing I always do after installing a FreeBSD is
> >>>>add this line to crontab:
> >>>>
> >>>>00 02 * * * /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
> >>>>
> >>>>I guess I'm a locate-freak ;^D
> >>>>
> >>>Done.  Thanks again.
> >>You guys should rather use /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate script
> >>to update your locate database.
> >
> >I'm pretty new to all of this, so how does one go about invoking that
> >script?
> 
> Well, to run it by hand you type:
> 
>    /etc/periodic/weekly/310.locate
> 
> Otherwise it will be run automatically by the periodic(8) system. 
> It is enabled by default:
> 
> happy-idiot-talk:~:% grep locate /etc/defaults/periodic.conf 
> # 310.locate
> weekly_locate_enable="YES"                              # Update locate 
> weekly
> 
> You can create a file /etc/periodic.conf to control turning on
> or off or to tweak parameters for any of the periodic scripts.
> 
> As the name suggests it's a weekly script, and if you look at
> /etc/crontab you will see the line:
> 
> 15      4       *       *       6       root    periodic weekly
> 
> Or in other words, it runs at around 4:15am on Saturdays.
> 
> If you wanted to run it every day, then you'ld copy it to
> /usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/310.locate, globally substitute
> daily_locate for weekly_locate eg. by:
> 
> sed -i.bak -e 's/weekly_locate/daily_locate/' \
>     /usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/310.locate
> 
> and then put both 'daily_locate_enable="YES"' and 
> 'weekly_locate_enable="NO"' into /etc/periodic.conf
> 
> In this case it would be run by the periodic system like so:
> 
> 1       3       *       *       *       root    periodic daily
> 
> that is: at 3:01am every day.
> 
> 	Cheers,
> 
> 	Matthew
> 

Thanks to folks like you, Matthew, I'm slowly, but surely, learning this
stuff.

Rem



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