makewhatis / updatedb

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 09:37:16AM -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
> <snip>
> 
> makewhatis and updatedb have nothing to do with each other.  makewhatis
> generates the database for the "man -k" or "appropos" commands, updatedb
> generates the database for the "which" and "whereis" commands.

Umm, if I may dare correct our otherwise duly esteemed guru, updatedb
generates the database for the "locate" command.  "which" merely looks
for a command in your $PATH, and "whereis" (according to the man page)
looks in a few hardwired places for the binary, man page, and source
for something.  If either of them use the locate database, it's not
well documented.

> >What can cause updatedb to continue running and not finish? Could it be
> >the NFS filesystems? They've been mounted for months with no problems.
> 
> It could be.  You may have a recursive directory loop or something in
> there.
> 
> It depends on what changed on the filesystems it's checking.  You may
> need to use the "-e" option to exclude certain directories or the "-f"
> option to exclude filesytem types, e.g.
> 
> 	updatedb -f nfs
> 
> to exclude NFS volumes.

My system (up to FC1, now) has a default /etc/updatedb.conf which
says:

PRUNEFS="devpts NFS nfs afs sfs proc smbfs autofs auto iso9660"
PRUNEPATHS="/tmp /usr/tmp /var/tmp /afs /net /sfs" 
export PRUNEFS
export PRUNEPATHS

which, I think, excludes NFS mounts by default.  No?

I'm sorry.  I've done nothing to explain Karl's anomoly.

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
> - VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
> -                                                                    -
> -              Careful!  Ugly strikes 9 out of 10 people!            -
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

And senility gets the rest of us. :-)

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
Coincidence is when God chooses to remain anonymouse.