.\" A man page for updatedb(8). -*- nroff -*- .\" .\" Copyright (C) 2005, 2007, 2008 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. .\" .\" This copyrighted material is made available to anyone wishing to use, .\" modify, copy, or redistribute it subject to the terms and conditions of the .\" GNU General Public License v.2. .\" .\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT .\" ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or .\" FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for .\" more details. .\" .\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along .\" with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., .\" 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. .\" .\" Author: Miloslav Trmac .TH updatedb 8 "Dec 2020" plocate .SH NAME updatedb \- update a database for plocate .SH SYNOPSIS \fBupdatedb\fR [\fIOPTION\fR]... .SH DESCRIPTION .B updatedb creates or updates a database used by .BR locate (1). If the database already exists, its data is reused to avoid rereading directories that have not changed. .B updatedb is usually run daily from a .BR systemd.timer (8) to update the default database. .SH EXIT STATUS .B updatedb returns with exit status 0 on success, 1 on error. .SH OPTIONS The \fBPRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS\fR, \fBPRUNEFS\fR, .B PRUNENAMES and .B PRUNEPATHS variables, which are modified by some of the options, are documented in detail in .BR updatedb.conf (5). .TP \fB\-f\fR, \fB\-\-add-prunefs\fB \fIFS\fR Add entries in white-space-separated list \fIFS\fR to \fBPRUNEFS\fR. .TP \fB\-n\fR, \fB\-\-add-prunenames\fB \fINAMES\fR Add entries in white-space-separated list \fINAMES\fR to \fBPRUNENAMES\fR. .TP \fB\-e\fR, \fB\-\-add-prunepaths\fB \fIPATHS\fR Add entries in white-space-separated list \fIPATHS\fR to \fBPRUNEPATHS\fR. .TP \fB\-\-add-single-prunepath\fB \fIPATH\fR Add \fIPATH\fR to \fBPRUNEPATHS\fR. Note that this is currently the only way to add a path with a space in it. .TP \fB\-U\fR, \fB\-\-database\-root\fR \fIPATH\fR Store only results of scanning the file system subtree rooted at \fIPATH\fR to the generated database. The whole file system is scanned by default. .BR locate (1) outputs entries as absolute path names which don't contain symbolic links, regardless of the form of \fIPATH\fR. .TP \fB\-\-debug\-pruning\fR Write debugging information about pruning decisions to standard error output. .TP \fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR Write a summary of the available options to standard output and exit successfully. .TP \fB\-o\fR, \fB\-\-output\fR \fIFILE\fR Write the database to .I FILE instead of using the default database. .TP \fB\-\-prune\-bind\-mounts\fR \fIFLAG\fR Set .B PRUNE_BIND_MOUNTS to \fIFLAG\fR, overriding the configuration file. .TP \fB\-\-prunefs\fR \fIFS\fR Set \fBPRUNEFS\fR to \fIFS\fR, overriding the configuration file. .TP \fB\-\-prunenames\fR \fINAMES\fR Set \fBPRUNENAMES\fR to \fINAMES\fR, overriding the configuration file. .TP \fB\-\-prunepaths\fR \fIPATHS\fR Set \fBPRUNEPATHS\fR to \fIPATHS\fR, overriding the configuration file. .TP \fB\-l\fR, \fB\-\-require\-visibility\fR \fIFLAG\fR Set the \*(lqrequire file visibility before reporting it\*(rq flag in the generated database to \fIFLAG\fR. If .I FLAG is .B 0 or \fBno\fR, or if the database file is readable by "others" or it is not owned by \fBlocate\fR, .BR locate (1) outputs the database entries even if the user running .BR locate (1) could not have read the directory necessary to find out the file described by the database entry. If .I FLAG is .B 1 or .B yes (the default), .BR locate (1) checks the permissions of parent directories of each entry before reporting it to the invoking user. To make the file existence truly hidden from other users, the database group is set to .B locate and the database permissions prohibit reading the database by users using other means than .BR locate (1), which is set-gid \fBlocate\fR. Note that the visibility flag is checked only if the database is owned by .B locate and it is not readable by "others". .TP \fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR Output path names of files to standard output, as soon as they are found. .TP \fB\-V\fR, \fB\-\-version\fR Write information about the version and license of .B locate on standard output and exit successfully. .SH EXAMPLES To create a private plocate database as a user other than \fBroot\fR, run .RS .B updatedb -l 0 \-o .I db_file .B \-U .I source_directory .RE Note that all users that can read .I db_file can get the complete list of files in the subtree of \fIsource_directory\fR. .SH FILES .TP \fB/etc/updatedb.conf\fR A configuration file. See .BR updatedb.conf (5). Uses exactly the same format as the one used by .BR mlocate (1)'s updatedb, so they can be shared. .TP \fB/var/lib/plocate/plocate.db\fR The database updated by default. .SH SECURITY Databases built with .B \-\-require\-visibility no allow users to find names of files and directories of other users, which they would not otherwise be able to do. .SH AUTHOR Miloslav Trmac .P Steinar H. Gunderson .SH SEE ALSO .BR locate (1), .BR updatedb.conf (5)