On Tuesday 04 November 2003 17:54, William Kenworthy wrote: > Not a good idea. slocates purpose is not just portage. Its used on a > running system to allow users to easily and quickly find any file. > Hence its run daily as users tend to create/delete files each day.
I know what slocate and updatedb are used for. I'll explain my point of view. I view slocate and updatedb as utilities to help a user find system files NOT user files. I view the command 'find' as the utility of choice for finding user files. The reason I have this view is because I am a security aware individual. I set up slocate or updatedb so that it will not catalog files located in /tmp, /usr/tmp, /var/tmp, /mnt, /root, /usr/src, /var/spool, and /home. I also set users home directories to 0700. In this scenario, running slocate or updatedb daily is pointless, unless of course you update/install packages on your system every day. I didn't say slocate's purpose was for portage, I was just saying that in scenarios similar to mine it would be better to run or schedule slocate / updatedb after a world or system update because that is the only time cataloged files would change. > Your circumstance is not the most common one - not using linux all the > time. servers and user systems benefit from these facilities, both for > the admin and users in general. I also use a laptop and know what you > mean, and would be lost without an up-to-date locate with over 6Gbytes > of data files in my home directory - it does slow things down if you > dont "nice" it though. I tried to nice the programs but it doesn't seem to help my laptop. The system still slows to a crawl but then again I am talking about a Tecra 8000. I wish I could afford new hardware but being laid-off for about a year and a half with a mound of debt doesn't help. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
