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Updating the Locate Database can be a real drag
Authored by: rsnyder on Jan 27, '03 07:22:25PM

Prior to Jaguar I used to use Locator all the time, but less so now that the Finder Find is so fast I don't use it much. It is a good tool, but due to the nature of the locate database, it may not be right for everyone all the time.

The benefit to Locator over Finder is that Locator returns results that include hidden files and files in the hidden directories.

The down side to Locator is that the results are only as current as the last time you updated the locate database. Since the system has to reindex your whole drive each time, that can take several minutes. The locate database should be updated each week as part of the Unix weekly chron process, however a weekly update is too infrequent for most users.



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Updating the Locate Database:
Authored by: scoog on Jan 27, '03 11:41:32PM

In your Terminal app., type -
sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
Hit return, give up your password, it's all right, the system already knows it ;-]
Of course you can do this from within Locator, the cocoa app also.
locate will add to the database, all files on all drives&disks attached at the time of update.
If you need to do some searches on a dense CDR two days later, there you are, nearly instant results.
I like it.



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Updating the Locate Database can be a real drag
Authored by: hombre on Jan 28, '03 06:49:35PM

Yes, once a week is not adequate. That is why I added an entry to my crontab to update the database every night:

0 1 * * * root /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

Aside to rainer3 and Krioni: ROTFL :)



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