Re: [gentoo-dev] Vanilla behaviour in Gentoo Linux (long email)

[Steven Elling <ellings@kcnet.com>]

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.


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