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How do I edit the update.conf at /etc/update.conf to run every day on Ubuntu? This would enable me to use locate with a very recent database.

I read this:

default setting, updatedb, it has been in /etc/cron.daily and its name is slocate.cron if you want to run updatedb on startup, you can add the line updatebd to the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

In FC4 you must edit the file /etc/updatedb.conf and set DAILY_UPDATE=yes.

But that is for Fedora.

Community
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dearN
  • 2,209

2 Answers2

18

From http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/oneiric/en/man8/updatedb.8.html

updatedb is usually run daily by cron(8) to update the default database.

Check /etc/cron.daily. It should be there. 

/etc/cron.daily$ ls *loc*    
mlocate
Rinzwind
  • 309,379
4

In addition to Rinzwind answer

updatedb is usually run daily by cron(8) to update the default database.

Now back to your demand:

if you want to run updatedb on startup

you can use cron for this job, run the command:

sudo crontab -e

Add the following:

@reboot /usr/bin/updatedb

Save and exit.

Now this ensures that you'll update the mlocatedb on every startup of your system, in addition to its scheduled everyday.

You can comment the line containing mlocate in /etc/cron.daily to stop the usual schedule everyday.

Maythux
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