mlocate is a set of tools for quick search files by the file system.
Utility mlocate (Merging Locate) is a new implementation of the classical version of the locate/updatedb, established in 1982 year. The original version of tools developed in the project Utilities GNU Find (findutils) from 1994 year. Added to the name of the collection of utilities and “M” means “merge” (merging), development started in 2014 year.
locate scans a previously created using the updatedb database startup force or in the background on a schedule (via demon-scheduler CRON or systemd/service). Existing database is reused to avoid rereading most part of the file system.
locate is much faster than the traditional utilities to search for files (e.g. find), but it requires regular updates of the database. Although due to the regular scan of the file system decreases the overall efficiency and absolute precision, because the database is not updated in “real time“.
Database of the original version of locate available to read and edit all users, as the index is created from a non-root user. mlocate version and an earlier version of slocate uses a database with restricted access, displaying only the file names available to the user.
slocate (Secure Locate) — an enhanced version of locate, as in the original version to search for files using a regularly updated database. Unlike the original, the new version indexes every file on the file system, not just those that are available to all users. In the search results to show only readable by a specific user.
Package mlocate includes the current version of locate (compatible with GNU Locate) and the latest version of slocatein the configuration file (/etc/updatedb.conf) set the indexing options (ignored files. directories, etc), the database can use the “default” (/var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db), own and/or several.
mlocate (locate/slocate) have a few extra options compared to the original version. Despite all the disadvantages when working with a database, especially when there are a large amount of data you can get a much faster alternative to search for files.
License: GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPLv2)
Author: posixru
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